I found myself up much too early for a Saturday in Vegas but I was off to Pahrump to cover the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. It was looking to be a great day for this event, slight cloud cover and a decent temp for the desert. We arrived at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch as the sun was coming up, as everyone else scrambled for coffee and made their way into the drivers meeting I took a tour of the pits to see who was competing.


I was immediately drawn to the One Lap Camaro and next to it I found Steve Rupp’s Bad Penny.


To my dismay I discovered that One Lap was there for exhibition only but it still put on a good show. James Shipka ran it on the road course and Mary Pozzi burned it up on the AutoX as usual. When I ran into Mary later that day and asked how she did she nonchalantly said “Oh 40. something”, mind you the top four laps for that event included three 40.xx and Mark Stielow’s blistering 39.359. Pretty good for an exhibition run if you ask me.



Next I came across the sinister looking black ’69 of Todd Akes nick named “Pay Back”
Here I found Doug and AJ wrenching away making “last minute winning adjustments”


Later I caught Todd out on the road course tearing it up.



Next to Todd’s car was the 1986 TransAm of Polly Motor Sports, with an F4 supercharger stuffed under the hood producing over 1400 horsepower and a recorded top speed of over 252 MPH, this was one mean machine!


When Polly was opening it up on the back straight I swear I saw a jack rabbit get sucked into his intake.


Kind of sums up Polly’s state of mind when he built this car.


I came across Carl Cassanova’s ’68, this is one great looking car, Tom Holt is seen here taking it through tech.


Being a street car challenge the entered cars must be completely street legal including insurance and current registration.


The only 5th gen Camaro I saw competing at the event was the Magnacharger blown 820HP machine of Bryan Wilson of Centerforce.


This was the first time on a track for this car as well as the first competition for Bryan.


Another one of my favorite cars is Steve Rupp's Bad Penny. Here you see BP being bad as Steve takes her through the chicane. I caught up with David Pozzi as he was taking her through tech, David told me that Penny was sporting a new power plant that he and Steve assembled over at Nelson Racing Engines. Totaling 460 CI this new engine was putting out 720HP at the crank.


I made my way over to the Detroit Speed and Engineering trailer to see the slew of Mast Motorsports LS powered cars they had.


Here we see DSE owner Stacey Tucker in her blue '69 test mule (Her personal car mind you). Being an ex GM engineer and now engineering her own parts at DSE you can be sure she knows exactly what this car is capable of.


Another DSE built car was Paul Alderson's freshly built 2nd gen. With 606 horsies at the crank Paul says his car is "overdoing it in an understated way".


Making a cameo appearance was Charlie Lillard and his yellow '69 camaro Jackass, although Charlie did not compete he was seen gassing up and heading over to one of the other courses at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch.


And now for the belle of the ball Mark Stielow's Red Devil.


Previous to the Optima event Marks car won the Gran Turismo Best Hot Rod award during SEMA, this means that the car will appear in the next release of Grand Turismo and we all will have a chance to drive it. Mark was overheard stating that he plans on putting the in game version of the car into a wall at 140MPH, thank goodness for the reset button


Mark and his Red Devil were the overall winners of the 2010 Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational placing 1st in the AutoX and 2nd in the road race events as well as a 1st in the speed brake challenge. Mark was pretty much a favorite coming into the challenge and did not disappoint one bit. Congrats Mark!


For the official results go here http://www.optimainvitational.com/20...CI_results.pdf