Optima Batteries has put on a Ultimate Street Car Invitational for the 5 year in a row now. This event takes place the day after the SEMA show ends, and features a total of 50 cars to compete. 40 of the cars are pre registered prior to SEMA, and the other 10 are chosen at the SEMA show itself. These extra 10 entries are considered the Golden Ticket Winners. The hosts of the Optima Challenge scout the entire show for 4 days and announce the winners on the last day at SEMA.


311128_10151226511877357_1387617837_n by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

When our name was called at the Optima Press Conference as a winner of a golden ticket, we were ecstatic! Once the dust settled after becoming a participant to the event, we realized we had much work to do. Our car was being displayed at the show, but not ready for the track. Luckily another golden ticket winner was a good friend of mine Joey Sealy from BBI Autosport. Joey and I have done quite a bit of work together in the aftermarket tuning industry. Both of our cars did not have the correct tires to run in the Optima Challenge, and both his car and mine needed half a days worth of work to do. At this moment, I went ahead and called one of my employees from my shop HG Motorsports in San Diego, CA to get a few sets of tires, tools, Brembo big brake kit, and extra supplies. While we started the rally portion of the Optima Challenge, my employee was rushing to Vegas with all the supplies.


photo 1 copy by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

Once we left the Shelby Museum, Joey and I rushed to our friends over at Subaru of Las Vegas. They offered to let us use some of their service bays to perform the work needed on our cars to make them legal for the competition. First things first, we worked on getting the correct 200+ tread wear tires mounted on our wheels. Joey needed to build a battery bracket due to his previous one breaking. Next was my Fiat 500 Abarth. We needed to replace the factory front brake system with an upgraded Brembo Big Brake kit to handle all of the abuse the car would endure on the track. Along with that, we bled all the brakes on the car and performed a complete inspection. By the time Joey and I were completed with our cars, it was 11:30pm. After that it was off to the Pahrump Nugget, at which we arrived around 12:45.


photo 2 by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

photo 3 by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

photo 4 by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

photo 5 by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

400345_10152267680775078_370318578_n by HG Motorsports, on Flickr


With just a few hours of sleep, we were at the track going through Tech to have our cars approved for the race track. The first event that we competed in was the Autocross track. This was a very fun setup, in which the Fiat did pretty well in. After running the autocross course 3 times, we left with a respectable time in which we were happy with.


photo 1 copy 2 by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

Next up was the road course challenge, in which we were very excited to compete in. On the warm up lap, we blew off an intercooler pipe, which forced us to throw in the towel early and come back to the pits. Once in the pits, we realized what the issue was and began to tear down the car. Just like every european car, there was much to do to get to the intercooler pipe we needed to get to. This entire process took us about an hour to repair. Once repaired, we went back on the track for the final timed session of the road course event. As fate would have it, we blew off the same intercooler pipe on the warm up lap again! It was at that point that we realized that we did not have enough time to reconnect the pipe and finish the road course part of the event.
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The way that the event was planned out was incredible. I have been very active in time attacks, time trials, and road racing in general. This event looked like a race weekend at a Grand Am race! Everything from big rigs, pit crews, and even tire warmers everywhere for all of these street cars. It was truly amazing.


photo 2 copy by HG Motorsports, on Flickr

I had such an amazing time and truly enjoyed the hospitality from all of the crew at Optima. Hopefully next year we can return and put some hurt on all of the muscle cars there!