Karting graduate Karol Pasiewicz defied all expectations to lead Olivia Racing’s single-car operation to the 2026 USF Juniors title in the team’s first year under its new identity. Feeder Series caught up with the Polish racer and his engineer, Augusto Soto-Schirripa, to learn more about the fairytale title charge.

By Marco Albertini

The championship charge wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nine months before, the car was meant to be someone else’s. The team had never raced under their new identity, and there were no teammates who could gather additional data.

Heading into 2026, accomplished karter Karol Pasiewicz knew he’d be involved in the Olivia Racing USF Juniors project, but as the team’s reserve driver.

With finances tight for the Polish driver, a race seat in the series wasn’t likely. But then on the eve of the Florida-based YACademy Winter Series, a promotion for Pasiewicz arose, allowing the Łódź native to make his long-awaited open-wheel debut.

Twenty-year-old Pasiewicz had spent his early years duking it out with Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Tymek Kucharczyk in karts, but moving to single-seaters in 2021, when Pasiewicz turned 15, proved ‘too expensive’, he said.

What followed was a fruitful stint in shifter karts, which included two ROK Cup Superfinal titles in 2024 and 2025. More importantly, though, he raced with a team known as InterMS in his karting forays stateside, which gave him the connections needed for his long-awaited chance in junior formulae.

Heading into 2026, InterMS’ USF Juniors programme broke away and became Olivia Racing, an independent project led by Dana Delgado Sotto, who had been InterMS’ team principal.

InterMS finished at the bottom of the teams’ standings with a three-car operation in 2025, but with a new name and slimmer effort in 2026, they transformed their fortunes. Once Pasiewicz’ reserve driver opportunity turned into a full-season drive, he began the year brilliantly in the YACademy Winter Series, securing runner-up honours with a lone podium to his name.

“There has been so much preparation into this year,” Pasiewicz told Feeder Series after the final USF Juniors race of the season at Road America. “With me being a reserve driver at the beginning, I didn’t even know if I was going to drive this season. I got the opportunity, so I tried to learn as much [as possible] about the car and push as much.

“I’ve been practicing a lot on the simulator. I’ve been sitting 10 hours a day on the simulator two weeks before Road America. Every single race I prepare myself on the simulator, go to the gym, run, do some cardio, do some weights. I’m also high [tall], so I have to cut more weight. The preparations are tough, but I sacrificed a lot this year to be here and I’m happy.”

Continuing with the team for the main USF Juniors season a week after the YACademy programme ended, Pasiewicz opened his account by finishing second in all three races at Homestead-Miami. That put him second in the championship, but his early-season progress was hampered by an ‘unfortunate’ weekend in South Carolina.

A mistake in setting up tyre pressures for qualifying put him behind VRD’s Iván Machado Pérez in second. The pair then collided in race one, which set the stage for the rest of the weekend. While the Spaniard finished third and won the remaining two races to take the points lead, Pasiewicz got the short end of the stick.

“At Homestead we had a triple P2,” said Pasiewicz. “We entered the season with good momentum from YACademy, which was my first ever races that I’ve done in formula. Then we went to Carolina and we messed up with the pressure in qualifying. That’s why I didn’t manage to snatch the P1 from Iván [Machado Pérez]. It was just an unfortunate weekend. Race one, I got stuck behind Ivan and went into his back and flew out [of contention]. I managed to finish P18, second race I got taken out, and then third race was no pace. That was a bit frustrating.”

His misfortunes in South Carolina only gave him a reason to keep pushing more. The countless hours on iRacing, he said, was like ‘preparing myself even more for the military’. In the end, all the training paid off when he went into battle a month later at Mosport and won all three races from pole to snatch the points lead.

While his main rivals changed from round to round, Pasiewicz remained firmly at the front, qualifying on pole for both Mid-Ohio races and taking three more podiums between there and Lime Rock. He entered Road America with an 80-point lead and won the title easily with second place in race one. Two more wins in the final two race cemented his status as the series’ dominant force in 2026.

On long straights like those at Road America, Pasiewicz had time to rest – a luxury compared with the ‘very exhausting’ manual shifting he had to do every few seconds in shifter kart races. Even with less of a physical challenge, all of his learning came without a teammate or any reference points.

“I had to practice a lot because I had nobody here to help me out,” Pasiewicz explained. “I had to figure out where the limits were, where the braking points were, how was the setup of the car. Augusto [Soto-Schirripa], my engineer, also helped me a lot, as he was a driver before engineering. Basically, the simulator, doing 10 hours of simulator a day just helped me out.”

Soto-Schirripa finished sixth in the 2024 USF Juniors standings and was third in the 2023 F4 US points in a part-time effort for InterMS. He then continued with the team albeit on the other side of the pit wall.

As Soto-Schirripa speaks to Feeder Series, Pasiewicz is helping the team pack up their tent – a task few other drivers in the paddock do of their own volition. ‘He’s a great kid’, Soto-Schirripa says of Pasiewicz, praising his strong on-track speed and more mature outlook relative to those of his younger rivals.

“You don’t have to win races to win championships, and it’s hard to make these kids understand that,” Soto-Schirripa said. “But for him, he knows he has one shot at this and one shot only, so he raced with his head all year. His maturity really showed. But other than that, the kid has pure pace. We saw in this last race. We told him to go out these last two races and just give it all you got, don’t hold back, and he showed what he could really do. So it doesn’t showcase his ability throughout the championship, but at the end of the day, they remember who’s a champion and not who won a race.”

Looking to 2027, Pasiewicz is set to step up full-time to USF2000 with Olivia with the aid of a $251,516 scholarship. In August, once it had become clear that he was likely to win the title, he made a one-off appearance at Portland, being classified 17th after an early retirement in race one before bouncing back to finish sixth in race two. Pasiewicz said he plans to rent an apartment near Olivia’s base in Doral, Florida, for next year after spending 2026 commuting back and forth from Europe.

“The race that we have done in Portland already gave us a lot of experience, even though we have just finished one session which was race two and 10 minutes of quali,” said Pasiewicz. “But I think it gave us the opportunity to actually see how the car works, how every single team works, how the drivers are driving middle corners, exits, how they prepare, so next year we can absolutely go with a good result at the beginning.”

Interview by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Gavin Baker Photography