As we post this, RideTech’s Brett Voelkel is tooling on the now infamous “48 Hour Camaro” at the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational in Nevada. The competition is probably the premier Pro Touring shootout held in the world and most likely the Camaro is holding its own with Brett at the tiller. 24 Hours ago Brett was finishing up at the 2011 SEMA show like the rest of us and he took the time to file one last RideTech report from SEMA before hitting the road to Pahrump, Nevada for the Optima Invitational.

Here’s Brett’s parting shot from SEMA 2011 –

“My updates are getting later and later because I’m getting tireder and tireder. (is tireder really a word?) this one is so late that I’ve run Wednesday and Thursday together!”

There is no place to sit at SEMA. Even most of the eating places at the convention center use tall tables without stools to keep the people moving. Unless you want to use the toilet you’ll be on your feet for 12-18 hours per day. By now I can see hundreds of people sitting on the floor leaning against the wall. It looks like a snowed in airport!

We filmed 8 customer testimonial videos on Wednesday. I had been wanting to do this for several years, but never could get it put together. This year was the perfect storm and we got Alan Johnson, Jimi day, Troy Trepanier, and several other customers on camera pontificating on the virtues of RideTech products. Along those lines, I have been truly stunned by the number of customers who have gone out of their way this year to request RideTech decals for this show. And not just the normal sized contingency style decals…they want the giant 22″ tall logo graphics. Bless their hearts!

On Thursday they announced the final 10 participants in the Optima race on Saturday. I didn’t catch all their names but they’ll be on the Optima website. I did see that among the last ten cars was a 98 Tahoe and an early 70’s Volvo. That should be interesting!
In addition to all the normal business stuff I have to do, I’ve been hanging out at the Optima corral outside where most of the optima participants are parked. Seems like everyone has either a brand new car, or has made radical changes in their setup recently with little testing time. That should make for some good TV on Saturday. In addition, it’s supposed to be cold and windy on raceday. New setups, cold track, windblown sand, cold tires…oh yeah, I want to see this!

Friday is going to be crazy…2 more meetings, get the car packed up and ready for the road rally to Pahrump, move luggage around, take people to the airport, and try to remember if I’ve actually got everything ready to go on the 48 Hour Camaro for the Optima race on Saturday. I’m looking forward to the 4 hour nap on the plane ride home on Sunday!

The next update will likely be written on the plane ride home on Sunday, I’ll have plenty to report on the Optima race by then.

— Brett