Optima Winner 2013!!!!

[EBMC]

Originally Posted by Rick D

Tim but if I remember correctly the reason they put the design eliment is was to keep the race car out or at least keep them from taking over the whole thing? If you think back to Hot Rods Fastest "Street" in America that's what happened there. After a couple of seasons nothing but race cars showing up.

I was a crew member for Monty Berney and part of the build of the legendary "Bertha 1" in the early 90's, I remember very well! After a couple of years though, nothing but Pro Mods with weight added.


Congrats Brian! Local boy done good!

[Revved]

Originally Posted by 130fe

Here are some pictures I took yesterday- http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/13...20Invitational I have some videos, can anyone recommend what app or service to load them on the net?

Click on the pics in photobucket and it gives you links to share them.. Copy and paste your links and on the top of the screen where you write your posts there is an insert link... you can drop them right into the thread. Getting them on to photobucket and finding them again is the hard part!!

I was out there most of the day as well... weather was awesome... Cars were awesome! I really enjoyed watching the Red Ridetech Chevy pickup tear up the Autocross course. At one point he spun out so proceeded to do donuts. That truck was FAST and sounds great!

It was great to see how the event has grown. I drove out the second year and had a connection back then to watch from the roof of one of the shop buildings (with a couple of the Ridetech guys if I remember correctly.) No such luck this year so it would have been nice for the spectators to have some type of big screen and cameras on the road course to give us pedestrians a better view of the event.

[Spiffav8]

Originally Posted by 130fe

Here are some pictures I took yesterday- http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/13...20Invitational I have some videos, can anyone recommend what app or service to load them on the net?

Great photo's Chris! Thanks for sharing!!!

[Ron in SoCal]

Congrats Brian! I think you set the tone early in the day obliterating the competition on the AutoX ...

[jeff71]

Isn't Brian's Vette mostly stock suspension wise?

[Matt@BOS]

Big congrats to Brian for the win! Even more impressive that he would have still won without any help from design points.

Speaking of design points, please find me one person other than the judges who doesn't find the results questionable at best.

[Ron Sutton]

Winner, winner ... catfish dinner.

Congrats Brian Hobaugh.

[LS7 Z/28]

Congrats to Brian, hands down the coolest Corvette I have ever seen. The family history makes it even cooler. Great job to Mark and Danny also.

[James OLC]

Originally Posted by glassman

Thanx Rick i looked everywhere for these, even on the Optima site. Oh the power of an ipad!!!!

Congrats Karl too for placing 7th, super tough competion.

Wonder what happen to James (OLC) placing 0 in hotlap and speed/stop.

the design points are kinda off imo. too much emphasis placed on design, Personally, since the points are soo tight, the design shouldn't have such high numeric value, 1/2 that would bee sufficient. Is it that older builds do not matter as much? I do like the fact that the "movement" matters the most.

Mike

I won't make any excuses for our 5th shot at the OUSCI title - I had a bad day. I've been fighting some health issues over the last few months and we wound up getting the car together much later than we had hoped and we really didn't have a chance find the weak points in the new setup before SEMA. The car was great on the cruise Friday night despite having no dyno tuning and me having no seat time. Saturday the car felt really good on the recon laps but we never really had an opportunity to push on the car; the weight loss was noticeable and the car felt more responsive than ever. We started on the Autocross and on my second run something started to feel odd with the steering - I attributed it to the difference between the old box and the new rack. I knew my AX times weren't great and was pretty disappointed in my performance heading in to the road course portion of the event.

Things didn't get off to a great beginning for the time trials as my starter died and I needed a push start to get going - definitely killed my focus. At the end of the warm up lap I got to the end of the straight and turned in to the last series of turns and felt something give in the steering - just a click but I think that I went through the last two turns sideways. I had a pretty decent first lap going despite a bad end to the warm up but again, at the end of the back straight things went south. I got to the first turn at around 130 only to find that I had no power steering. I muscled though the three turns only to have the PS come back on the last one, again putting me sideways. I tried to get through the second lap but the PS kept coming and going and frankly it was a pretty hairy lap. If the PS has stayed dead I would have tried a third but it was pretty unsafe the way it was and I pulled off.

DSE helped us out with a replacement PS pump and we swapped ours out before for speed stop challenge. In the pits it felt like we had it fixed but as I pulled it up for the speed stop it quit again. This is all being made worse in so much as we don't have a starter and we're bump starting the car every time we need to try something. I tried to do the speed stop without power steering but it kept coming and going and I was never able to out together a solid run (although I thought I did better than I guess I did).

Definitely not the day I was hoping for but I am thankful that we had the opportunity. We'll do our best to regroup and will be back at some point - hopefully in time for the first Ultimate Street Car Series event at Laguna Seca in March.

Congratulations to Brian and Mark for their great finish and to all of the other forum members - Brian, Karl, Matt and a host of others - for a great showing.

[jeff71]

"the first Ultimate Street Car Series event at Laguna Seca in March."

They are coming to Laguna?