This weekend I volunteered to work at the 2nd Annual Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. This event is meant to take (primarily) SEMA show cars on to the track to prove that they're more than just show. The event has grown and 52 cars were entered this year with even more variety than before. 4 different competitions make up the event:
Road Course:
Each car gets a warmup lap followed by 3 timed laps, and a cool down lap. The slowest timed lap is thrown out while the better two are counted. Dropping two wheels off at any point immediately results in a 3:00 time. This was to prevent any corner hopping or time consuming track cleanup.
Autocross:
Like the road course, each car would get 3 timed runs with the slowest run thrown out.
0-60-0:
As one would guess, this was a simple acceleration and braking trial. Everyone used the same timing equipment which would trigger a light to let the driver know when the car hit 60. Unfortunately, some cars had issues with the light not functioning properly. As a result, their runs were not nearly as good.
Design:
This is the sillier subjective part of the competition. No, this isn't about theoretical performance. Instead, it is only about aesthetic appearance and unique customization . . . The idea was that anything performance related would sort themselves out in the other 3 events. I disagree given that not all cars had been sorted out on a track, outfitted with competitive R compound tires, and driven well.
Here are a few pictures. I'll update this after I get a couple of tests and projects out of the way.
Go, Penny, Go!
The Ridetech Camaro, Velocity, looked like it had some sort of rubbing issue when it tried to put the power down through a corner.
Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational 2009
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