“The strangest death in Indy 500 history” chronicled in latest Octane Press book

New from the motor racing secure of writer Octane Press, The Final Lap is an inquest into the quick life and mysterious dying of racing driver Pete Kreis, killed in apply on the 1934 Indianapolis 500. A quick-paced narrative that reads like a novel, writer and historian William Walker’s lifelong obsession along with his cousin’s mysterious dying creates a wealthy storyline that takes readers again to the glamorous and harmful occasions that marked the start of automotive competitors.

From his early days of racing on back-country dust roads of his native Knoxville, Tennessee, to the glory days of piloting cutting-edge Duesenbergs and Millers on world-famous tracks, Kreis led a colourful life. However he was pushed to win the most important race on this planet: the Indy 500. Written by William Walker, historian, vehicle fanatic, and notably Kreis’s personal cousin.

Over the previous century, the world of motor racing has witnessed many mysterious deaths, few could possibly be extra puzzling because the crash that killed the promising younger driver. Son of a rich contractor, Pete Kreis began racing on the Indy circuit in 1925 and blazed a profession on American tracks and at Monza, Italy, in Grand Prix competitors. Often known as a grasp of front-drive Miller automobiles, he met his demise on the 1934 Indianapolis 500. Piloting a front-drive race automotive in apply, Kreis crashed into Flip One, rode alongside the highest of the retaining wall for seventy-five toes, and careened down an embankment on the south finish of the oval. Because the automotive smashed right into a tree within the yard of a close-by home, each he and his mechanic have been killed.

A 12 months later, an off-the-cuff coroner’s jury of Indy drivers, Speedway officers, and racing consultants examined the Kreis accident intimately. They decided that he was touring at a comparatively gradual velocity, that his automotive had no mechanical defects, that there have been no impediments on the observe, and that Kreis himself had taken no evasive motion to point that he tried to keep away from his destiny. The jury famous that he “was apparently in the perfect of well being and spirits” however couldn’t clarify the circumstances. They have been pressured to conclude that his demise was “the strangest dying in all racing historical past.” The precise reason for his crash has been a thriller ever since.

Years later, writer William Walker, a loyal fan of the Indy 500, was impressed by a 1935 newspaper clipping detailing the circumstances of the unsolved thriller to find out the reason for his cousin’s dying. For greater than sixty years he interviewed Pete’s racing colleagues and lots of family members who grew up with the mercurial driver, visiting all of the tracks that Kreis had raced, consulting quite a few archives, and re-examining tons of of eye-witness accounts of Kreis’s racing exploits and dying. Walker was lastly capable of attain his personal compelling and tragic conclusion. Written with all of the authority of the perfect historic racing narratives and with the added fringe of a interval thriller, The Final Lap will attraction to followers of motor racing and suspense fiction alike.

With an official launch date that coincides with the 2023 working of the Indy 500 on Might twenty eighth, the e book is out there for pre-order now from Octane Press, or wherever books are bought.