(Photos courtesy of Optima Batteries) – As we told you last weekend, Brian Hobaugh was the winner of the 2013 Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational, narrowly edging out defending champion Mark Stielow for the honors. His 1965 Corvette is as iconic as it is bad ass and you’ll see it in this first gallery from the 2013 Optima Street Car Invitational. We have nearly 600 photos to share with you and in order to keep you from welding yourself to your desk chair to check ’em out, we’re going to dole them out 100 at a time over the next six days.

This first gallery takes us from early in the morning, before sunrise to the first time the racers got to drive their cars on the challenging road course at the Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Parhump, Nevada. Later galleries will take us to the autocross, the speed stop, and other events as competitors put some of the coolest exotics, muscle, and pro touring cars in the nation through their paces! Famous vehicles like the Herb Adams built Cheverra where running hard on the same asphalt as newer cars like the Wally’s World GTO that has been featured on BangShift. It is a spectacular event and we recommend taking it in whenever you can get to the SEMA show. It happens on the Saturday following the show, so it doesn’t add that much time to your trip!

The 2013 Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational was the biggest, baddest, and fastest yet. With the new Ultimate Street Car Association coming on line for 2014, it will only continue to get better!

HIT THE LINK BELOW FOR TODAY’S LOAD OF 2013 OPTIMA ULTIMATE STREET CAR INVITATIONAL PHOTOS!

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