jrcart

Weistec and I are participating the the Optima Battery USCA(Ultimate Street Car Assoc.) races at Daytona Motor Speedway in Daytona Beach, FL this weekend (4/23-5/25). Both my Weistec supercharged C63 BS & SLS BS will be competing in the event.

Weistec will have their tuning equipment with them so if anyone from central Florida has been thinking about an ECU tune now is your chance to get an on the spot Wesitec tune with no down time or hassle of removing, packing and shipping your ECU, just show up and they will take care of the rest. You will not even get your hands dirty. You can be in and out with a bunch more power and torque in 30-45 minutes.

Even if you are not interested in getting a tune you should come out and meet the Weistec guys and spectate and see if Weistec and I can hold our own against some of the other fastest street cars in the world on one of the fastest tracks in the world.

Either shoot me or @WEISTEC a PM if you are interested to set-up an appointment or get special pricing.

Hopefully we will see a few of you out there this weekend.

Ingenieur

they should arrange something with the MB Club and come to Pittsburgh for the Vintage Grand Prix

bring your beast too and do a few laps

it's a huge event
2000 cars
200,000 visitors

http://www.pvgp.org/
http://www.pvgp.org/race-weekend-events-2/

jrcart

It looks like a cool event. I sometimes go up to Road America for the Historic Race, they even run the old Can-Am monsters up there.

I am sure Weistec would not have a problem planning a trip anywhere if it made business sense, they have been traveling all month, Texas, Canada, Chicago and now Florida.

Ingenieur

It is a very cool deal
middle of a park in Pittsburgh, in the University district

a very hilly/twisty/narrow road course
people travel from all over to attend

it's a car nerds dream

most of the proceeds go to charities (autism, etc.)

they have vendor booths, they could set one up and show your machine(s)
get a lot of exposure from a dedicated (and well to do) consumer base

Dave@CarVerse

The Weistec Crew does a great job. Any guys that will be local in the area should take advantage of their expertise. Good info jrcart.

blackbenzz

Good luck at Daytona Beach Jim and Weistec Rep the MB's well

Autosport7

I 2nd the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix! What an amazing event!

OptimaJim

The USCA will be running at Pittsburgh International October 3-5th. Maybe that would be a mutually beneficial date for those in the Pittsburgh area?

Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries

HoozyerdaddyC63

I was at the dealership the other day and James was telling me about meeting up with you and the guys from Weistec and your trip to Daytona.

Good luck Jim! Should be fun.

Let me know if you head out to Byron again. This should be my last summer with my C63 and I'm going to have to revert back to stock before my emissions test at the end of July. Unless I can't find the 507 I want the headers and exhaust are going up for sale.

OptimaJim

What an incredible venue and a truly amazing place to run-



Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries

OlegKouz

Any plans to visit South Florida?

jrcart

Great Photo! I am going to start a thread recapping my weekend at the Optima USCA Daytona Event. I had a great time, although I was a little disappointed that they put up a couple chicanes that really slowed us down. I would love to see more AMG's out there competing against all the American muscle. For anyone interested the next Optima USCA evetn is at Fontana, CA in a couple weeks and then the event moves on to my home track Road America in late June. I will really be disappointed if they slow us down or don't let us run the entire 4 mile course at Road America, if they don't F with the course I can win that event.

jrcart

Cool shot but appears to be low resolution.

nlpamg

awesome.

OptimaJim

I don't know for sure, but if I had to guess, I would say no. That is actually the most-commonly asked question, not specific to South Florida, but basically are you coming to my backyard? The answer is almost always no. The USCA made every attempt to be geographically diverse in where they are running events and they are probably taking a risk on a place like Portland, but wanted to give people in the Pacific Northwest an opportunity to run, without having to drive 1,000+ miles to get to an event.

The two most-iconic tracks in Florida are Daytona and Sebring and the USCA is running both this year. Almost all of the competitors at Daytona came from out of state and it would be a hard sell to convince any of them to go all the way down to a track like Homestead, when Daytona & Sebring are both closer and "bucket list" tracks for a lot of folks. Frankly, Florida made out way better than anywhere else in the country, with two events relatively-close to each other. The closest events for folks on the East Coast are Pittsburgh and Daytona.

Sebring is probably only three hours from South Beach. I drove down with Randy Johnson and our trip to Daytona was 22+ each way. People who really want to run in these events will find a way to get there, no matter how far away they are. Everyone else will find an excuse not to go and that's fine too. If 30 cars show up from Miami at the Sebring event and tell the USCA they want to run at Homestead next year, they might listen.

As for the track configurations, that is always a tough decision. I've run the full track at Road America many times and I've also watched friends wad up and total out cars at that track during HPDEs, when no one was running for times. Safety is the number one priority at these events, so expect to see the bend before the Kink used for sure. That probably would've saved at least one Mustang and BMW that both wrecked in events I ran in.

Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries

jrcart

As someone who hauls his cars from coast to coast for races and events I find it funny whenever I hear people gripe about an event being too far. Florida gets two events, Sebring and Daytona. The difference between South Florida and Daytona is like a 3.5 hour drive lol. The USCA events are geographicaly locted perfectly IMO. I live in Chicago and have managed to run all three USCA events to date, Laguna Seca, Texas Speedway and Daytona. I am going to miss the next event out in Fontana due to some other obligations but will be registering both the C and SLs for the Road America event in late June. I also plan on running Gateway/St.Louis as it is only about a 3.5-4 hour drive from my house and considering the Michigan Speedway event as well.

These USCA events are great events which I highly recommend to anyone at nearly any skill level(with the exception of Laguna Seca). Laguna was a joke due to the decible limits, if Optima chooses to go back to that dump of a track I will be sure to let people know not to waste their time or money. Texas and Daytona were great, well run, safe and LOTS of track time. I would bet that 80% of the people reading this thread have an Optima USCA within a 7-8 hour drive of their home.ni personally have 4 events within 8 hours, Road America, Gateway, Michigan and Pittsburg. The only geographic section of the country without an event is the far North East.