Olga Cecic

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## General

### Color

Red, white (1966-1984)
TBA (1985-2004)

### Nationality

Yugoslavian (1966-1991)
Slovenian (1992-present)

### Model

Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona (1966-1978)
Axxelo NRW900T (1979-1984)
TBA (1985-2004)

## Racing

### Sponsor

WTY (1966-1983)
TBA (1985-2004)

### First Year

1966 (Europe)
1985 (Open Wheel)

### Last Year

1983 (Europe)
2004 (Open Wheel)

**Olga Cecic** is a retired Slovenian professional race car who raced in the Piston Cup European Series from 1966-1983 and the Open Wheel Series from 1985-2004. Considered as a bit of an anti-hero, she is most famously known as a 3-time Piston Cup Europe champion and the 1988 Open Wheel Series champion, as well as her rivalry with Bel White. She is actually a secret inspiration for some drivers.

## Career

### European Series

Cecic debuted in 1966 as a rookie. She would get her first 2 wins at the season opening race at Monaco and the 3rd last race of the season at Zandvoort. In 1967 she struggled to get a single win due to the dominance of Bel White who won all except 2 races of the season and the championship that year. In 1968 she started to have competition with White with the 2 winning all but the Zandvoort race where the pair collided with each other on the final lap which saw New Rearendian Tyrk Stocil win the race. However Olga was a few points ahead of Whte and scored the championship win. In 1969 she performed better after White had a slump and won her second title with 18 wins. However in 1970 she finished behind Bel White in almost every race as White won the title that year after winning all of the races. 1971 proved to be a bad year scoring only 1 win while White win 89% of the seasons races and the title. However in 1972 she had competition with Bel again scoring 18 wins and the title while White scored 3.

In 1973 she had many head to head battles with White but it was White who would win the championship that year. 1974 was her best year winning half of the season while Bel White won the other half. However that all changed in the 1974 Welsh-Marlboro Finale when she caused an infamous collision on the second lap. She was originally the 1974 champion until it was found out that she caused it on purpose and so she wasn't allowed to keep the points she had that year meaning that Bel White who was second in the standings was crowned champion. in 1975 she won 7 races and didn't have that much competition with White who missed the first 2 races of the season and performed terrible for the rest of the season and finished 7th in the standings. In 1976 she performed better winning 8 races and finishing 2nd behind champion Carlos Alvarez. In that same year Bel White retired.

However in 1977 her performance dropped after suffering the same fate White had in 1975 before the season but much worse. Worse enough for her to miss all races but the final 5 of the season. Afterwards she started to crash out in all of the 5 races she attended. In 1978 she started to crash out in all of the races she attended that year. After WTY threatened to fire her she decided to get surgery into a better model, an Axxelo NRW900T and that boosted her performance winning finishing 5th in the standings in 1979. In 1980 she won 3 more races and finished 2nd in the standings again. In 1981 she battled with Henrik Wolsey for the championship taking 6 wins but by the end of the season Cecic, Wolsey and Helmut Busch were tied for the championship. A tiebreaker race was held after the season which was won by Wolsey after Cecic who led most of the race, crashed on the final lap.

Her performance dropped a little in 1982 but still won 4 races but finished 9th in the standings. In 1983 she performed well winning 11 races overall. However that all changed at Spa when she was involved in a bad multi-crash at the first turn. She flipped 11 times in flames and the doctors told her that she couldn't race until 1985. After she was allowed to race again, instead of returning to racing in Europe she decided to do some open wheel racing instead.

### Open Wheel Series

After failing to get a spot in Indycar she decided to go to the Piston Cup's open wheel series instead where Bel White had raced in since 1977. She had competition with Bel again but Cecic won 4 races and finished 5th in the standings, one higher then Bel who finished 6th in the standings. She won the first race of the season at Brands Hatch but the next race at the Wheeliring saw the pair crash out and resulted in a fight. Afterward Cecic won 7 more races and finished 4h in the standings. She was winless due to the dominance of Bel White who won all the races in 1987 and the championship but during the Silverstone 600 Bel White crashed out on the 18th lap which allowed Cecic to win the race. In 1988 she won 16 races which was pure dominance from her, most likely because Bel White struggled throughout the rest of the season after a practice crash which killed rookie Dayson Dye. Cecic won the overall title.

In 1989 she won 4 races finishing 2nd in points behind Bel White who won no races but finished 3rd in the overall standings due to her performance. During the 1990 season she won 10 races but her rival Bel White won the championship without winning a race as she finished in the top 5 in every race except one. In that one race White never finished, Cecic had a battle for the lead with White until White made contact with Cecic and spun out flipping 2 times while Cecic finished in 6th. The rest of the 90's decade was ok for Cecic, she had 4 wins in 1991, 7 in 1992, 3 in 1993, 10 in 1994, 2 in 1995, 8 in 1996, 4 in 1997, 1 in 1998 and 6 in 1999. She almost won the 1997 championship but lost to Bel White by another point. In the 2000's her performance started to die down, she would win 2 races in 2000 and she would get her final win at Indianapolis in 2001. She won no more races from 2002 to 2003. In 2004, a year after White retired, she performed terrible and would retire that year.

## Personal life

Cecic grew up in Serbia which was part of Yugoslavia until she moved to Slovenia in 1969. She was married to 60's British F1 racer Jimmy Park in 1971. The pair had 6 children with the other 7 being adopted making up 13 different children until Park died in 1989. The first 4 adopted children had the surname park. Those children include Jimmy Park Jr. (1973), Olga II (1975 before Peter), Peter (1975 after Olga II), Tony (1976, twin of Alen), Alen (1976, twin of Tony), Klara Park (1978), Karolina (1979), Jadrana (1980), Tatjana Park (1981), Mihaela Park (1981), Slavka (1983), Metod (1985) and Ivan (1986). Olga II, Klara, Karolina, Jadrana, Tatjana, Mihaela and Slavka are all girls while the rest are boys. Surprisingly all of them are involved in sports with 9 in motorsports.

Jimmy Jr. raced in F1 from 1998 to 2003 and the went to the Piston Cup Open Wheel 2 series in 2004 and stayed there until 2008 where he moved to the World Rally Championship where he still races to this day. Olga II raced in the Piston Cup Euro Junior Series in 1999 and then advanced to the European Series in 2002. Peter is a wheelball player along with Tony and Slavka. Alen is a Goldman 5000 England racer since 2008 and won 8 consecutive titles from 2009 to 2016 and won another 3 titles in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and is possibly going to win a 12th in 2023. Klara is a driver in the Piston Cup Dirt Series running a part-time schedule since 2004. Karolina like Olga II started racing in the Euro Junior series in 2010 and advanced to the main European Series in 2011 but was fired after 2019 in favour of Next-Gens. Jadrana has been competing at hill climbs at pikes peak since 2013 and won once. Mihaela is just the exact same as Jadrana but debuted in 2001 instead and won 2 times. Metod raced in the Open Wheel 3 series from 2007 to 2012 and then the Open Wheel 2 series from 2013 to 2016 until he witnessed Adam Kalt's fatal crashed and retired. Ivan is also a Goldman 5000 England racer since 2008 and won a Goldman 5000 England season once in 2018. Her nephew Oleg (1974-2000) also raced in Goldman sanctioned series first in the 2500 and later the 5000 but tragically died in 2000 from a crash.