Yamaha Racing Team young gun Rick Olson isn’t ruling himself out of title contention in the Australian Supersport Championship despite a crushing crash in Sunday’s season opener at Phillip Island.

The current national Formula Xtreme 600 Champion is looking to add an ASBK Supersport title to his credit in 2011, but he’ll be starting on the back foot after scoring fifth in race one and crashing out of the second leg over the weekend.

“It wasn’t the opening weekend of the championship I was hoping for,” Olson admitted. “Race one was good without being great, while race two was a disaster as I scored no points.

“The positive is that it is only the first round, so there is plenty of time to make up the lost ground.”

Former Supermoto standout Olson’s race scores of 5-DNF forced him to settle for 13th for the round and looking for a better showing at round two of the championship this weekend in Tasmania.

Experience teammate Kevin Curtain raced to a solid second overall with 2-2 results behind Gobert Motorsports Yamaha privateer Aaron Gobert.

Heading into Symmons Plains’ second round this weekend, Curtain trails Gobert by just two points while Olson is 26 points off the series leader.

Olson won’t defend his FX600 title with Yamaha this season, instead opting to step up to the FX1000 category in that series that commences on 11-13 March at Eastern Creek.