Aaron Pfadt

Optima Batteries created the Ultimate Street Car Challenge to highlight the amazing cars that are on display at the SEMA show. After the show closes on Friday evening, the invitation-only competitors make their way south to Spring Mountain Motorsports for the event. The goal of the event is to have the owner or builder of the car drive in three events to highlight their build - Autocross, Road Race, and 0 to 60 to 0.

Pfadt Race Engineering had two cars competing - our SEMA 2010 Camaro running sway bars and drop springs, and an Optima Batteries C6 Z06 with our Pfadt sway bars and coil overs.

The Camaro looked lean and mean on the starting line of the Autocross.



The Optima Corvette was ready for action.



Competitive cars included everything from hot rod trucks, and muscle cars to highly modified modern street cars. Speed TV was on site to film the action and the show will air in early January. We were thrilled to be invited to the event. The caliber of vehicles in the paddock was amazing and the competition was high.

With our stock engine we were underpowered compared to a lot of the competitors, but that didn't stop us from competing well and having a great time. We look forward to getting another invitation next year.

-Aaron

SIK02SS

Nice, how did it go? I saw the Optima Z last year at Watkins Glen at IRL, great looking/sounding Vette! The guys tried all weekend to let them be pace car for one of the groups (like HGP since Optima was paddocked with us) but the track kept saying no way.

Aaron Pfadt

We went into the event as a bit of an underdog in the 2010 Camaro group. There were four of these cars (2010 Camaros) and we were the only one without a Magnusen Supercharger. In fact, we had a stock LS3 with no mods. Given the 150 HP deficit, we expected to give up a little time on the other cars in the track event portion. We also had the stock Pirelli PZero tires on the car compared to some of them running much stickier DOT tires. The final nail in our coffin was that Fessler Moss / Pedders car was being driven by none other than Paul Tracy.

When all was said and done, the Paul Tracy driven car ran a 1:54 something and we ran a 1:56 flat. I'd like to claim that my superior driving skills kept us that close to Paul, but realistically, our Pfadt swaybars and drop springs made the car work fabulous. We could take full advantage of our LS3 power where the Pedders car was clearly hampered in its ability to take advantage of the power of the supercharger.

The bottom line was that it was a really fun event to be involved in and we hope to get invited back next year. We'll try to bring something a little more potent to even out the playing field.

The field of cars was awesome so you should try to catch the special on the Speed Channel in late January when it airs. A whole bunch of Pro-Touring cars showed up. Those are mostly vintage GM muscle like 60s and 70s Camaros with wicked motors and beefed up suspension. Bad Penny was there which is Steve Rupp's C5 suspended 68 Camaro that runs some Pfadt suspension under it. There was also a full Pfadt equipped '57 Chevy pickup (all C5 suspension) from Hot Rod Jim and the Corpala, a '64 Impala on a C5 chassis that runs Pfadt suspension. We were well represented with a variety of really neat cars.


Here are a couple of more photos from the event.

Robbin with the car in the morning





A C1 that was running. My photos do not do it justice.






-Aaron

Kubs

I will have to look for it come Jan. Looks like a fun time!

SIK02SS

Sweet! Sounds like you guys had a blast regardless of prep! didn't realize badpny has some Pfadt parts, nice!

lvrpool32

That C1 won Street Machine of the Year.

dbirdz06

Looks like a fun time, thanks for the pics

DOUG @ ECS

Nice job Aaron, we raced with the Optima Z at the Silver State Classic a while back. Nice group of guys.