POWER TOOLS
A BEVY OF BURNOUT., POWERSKID AND DRAG RACING WEAPONS DESCEND ON PERTH, TASMANIA FOR POWERCRUISE 70
THE Street Machine crew decided to spend the 2018 Australia Day weekend overseas. Sacrilege, I know – we couldn’t listen to the Triple J Hottest 100, eat any lamb or ‘shrimp’ cooked on any variation of a barbecue – but hear me out. Where we were heading, there would be burnouts, and we brought our own car, packing at least 7hp for each song in the countdown. We were going to Powercruise in Tasmania with the
Carnage MX5.7! On Thursday afternoon we made our way to the big red
Spirit of Tasmania ship, which travels between St Kilda in Melbourne and Devonport in Tassie twice a day. After security checked that we weren’t bringing any apples or weapons on board – apart from our 700hp twinturbo LS, that is – and panicking that we’d forgotten our passports (no, you don’t actually need them to go to Tasmania), we made it onto the boat.
Once on dry land we met up with Brenden ‘Bubba’ Medlyn, our 2016 Drag Challenge winner, who volunteered to help/party with us over the long weekend. Since it was Australia Day, we went shopping for Aussie flags and Bubba ended up buying half of Shiploads (similar to the Reject Shop) in Launceston. The SM budget could only afford a few Bunnings snags, but we weren’t complaining.
Eventually we made it to Symmons Plains Raceway for Day One of Powercruise 70. For the uninitiated, the concept behind Powercruise is that entrants get to drive around a race track and do whatever they like, provided they don’t end up driving on rims. Then there’s a burnout competition, off-street drags and a powerskid session.
Symmons Plains Raceway is a great spot; it’s a V8 Supercar track with a couple of really cool turns, a tight hairpin with a big elevation change and one massive back straight with a slight kink in it.
A handful of big-name cars made their way across the ditch on one of Andrew Lynch’s car carriers, including Lynchy’s own Corolla, Danny Younis’s blown Capri, Mark Schwarz’s HANFUL Monaro, Andrew Pool’s IBLOWN and Rodney Waters’s KRANKY HQ. There were a few really tough Tasmanian cars too, including Darren Triffett’s INJECTED VH Commodore and Jesse Paramore’s SKIDZO.
All these guys went through bulk tyres across the three-day event. Lynchy had run out of tyres by Saturday afternoon, but fortunately more were donated to the cause by Sunday morning. Local boy Darren burnt through over 250 litres of fuel on Saturday alone! Let’s hope the EPA isn’t reading this.
Friday night saw the first round of burnouts, although it was just a practice for the actual competition over the weekend. Lynchy couldn’t help himself and knocked off two sets of tyres right off the bat! We had the Carnage MX-5 on the pad for the very first time, too, and initially it was quite daunting because of the pad’s small size, but the car seemed to make it through in one piece, although the alternator died on us.
Saturday morning rolled around and the track cruising kicked off. I had spoken to a young bloke by the name of Jezz Gearman on Friday night about his home-built R31 Skyline drift car. His thoughts? “I want to take it home rodded; we’re going to go that hard!” Sure enough, by the time we arrived at the track on Saturday morning, the cammed and tunnel-rammed L98 had thrown a rod. “It was good fun while it hung together,” he said afterwards. Big thanks to Jezz for donating his alternator to get the MX-5 up and running again.
AT ONE POINT LYNCHY BLEW A TYRE AS HE CAME PAST THE STARTLINE COMPLETELY CROSSED UP – WHAT A HERO!
It was great to see plenty of other tough Tassie streeters blasting around the track, like Andrew Hingston’s 405ci Procharged small block-powered ’56 Chev. Another really cool sight was Tom Rolls’s VH Commodore track car. He built it at home with his brother Cameron from a stock 202 auto into a cammed Ls3powered, six-speed, ’caged racer with coil-overs and big brakes. Between Tom and Michael Bellinger with his 383ci stroker Ls-powered Datsun 240Z hillclimb car, there were certainly some quick old-school rides out on the track keeping the late-model Evos and Nissans honest.
Then there were guys like Lynchy and Danny Younis that just wanted to let it all hang out and enter every corner with as much sideways attitude as possible, and the crowd were absolutely losing it. At one point Lynchy blew a tyre on track right in front of me as he came past the startline completely crossed up – what a hero.
At the Saturday night burnouts, it was fantastic to see so many young people giving it a crack on the pad. They may not have been as exciting to watch as the
blokes with the big-banger cars, but you can’t knock these guys for learning car control in a safe environment and having a go; a lot of them can drive, too – thanks, I’m guessing, to the awesome driving roads that wiggle their way around Tasmania. All these blokes need is a shedload more horsepower under the bonnet!
Local hero Darren Triffett was a definite standout with his blown 427ci Chev-powered INJECTED VH Commodore. That is an angry car, and last time it was at this pad it caught fire in a big way, sending flames into the cabin and turning the fuel cell into a football. This time around it only started a small grass fire as it left the pad.
Queenslander Andrew Pool had a bit of an incident when he tipped-in his IBLOWN Commodore. Apparently VC door latches aren’t designed for skids, because as Andrew spun it around into the pad, his driver’s side door swung wide open and buckled the guard. He didn’t even lift, and still got the tyres off.
The powerskids were really cool too. The Powercruise guys set the startline just at the end of turn three and sent the cars down the front straight towards the hairpin. A bunch of the interstate guys decided to increase the difficulty by starting before the turn, coming around the corner and onto the straight with the tyres frying. Mark Schwarz nailed it in his HANFUL blown HQ Monaro and must’ve got bloody close to the wall – it looked epic.
In the off-street drags it seemed like no one could beat Powercruise promoter Gup with his all-wheeldrive Tesla Model S electric car – and there were some very tough cars in the running. Paul Hamilton had his twin-turbo 600ci XA Falcon out, but overpowered the track when the boost came on. We thought our MX-5 would do well, but it blew a tyre in the first round and was put out of contention. Ultimately only the blown and injected, slick-tyre Capri of Mark Whitla could run down Gup in the Tesla to take the win.
All in all, Powercruise was a great way to spend the Australia Day weekend, and we’ll almost definitely be back – maybe with more cars. Head to the Street Machine website and Youtube channel to see the Carnage episode from the weekend starring the twinturbo s MX5.7; it’s a cracker.