Remember Drake Olson? Not sure we did. Briefly a rising star in IMSA, Olson made a single start in a works Rothmans Porsche 962, sharing No3 (chassis 002) with Vern Schuppan at the 1986 Le Mans 24 Hours. Following a pair of trouble-free stints from the Australian, Olson took over in seventh place but lasted all but half an hour before he was forced to pit with hydraulics dramas, then not long after stopped for good on the Mulsanne with a broken gearbox. Schuppan was switched to No2, Olson to the hospitality suite to entertain guests.
That Serge Vanbockryck tracked him down to Alaska, where he runs a flying business ferrying intrepid mountaineers, skiers and snowboarders, to complete a six-page profile says a great deal about why that much overused word ‘definitive’ does indeed stand up to rigour in this (slip)case. A three-volume, 1400-page, hernia-inducing ‘book’ (that little word seems inadequate), Ultimate Works Porsche 962 is the fifth in Porter Press’s ‘Ultimate’ series and a mighty companion to the sister two-volume Porsche 956 opus written by the same author.