It’s better to burnout than fade away

4:34pm

Brett Battersby pops the hood of the Trackhawk and inspects its supercharged lump. “Nice… but it needs one of those,” he says pointing to the two engines bursting four feet out of the bonnets of his Fiat 126 and Toyota Hilux. A boilermaker by trade, he’s also a former champion of the most perplexing form of motorsport on Earth: professional burnouts. As an activity, burnouts couldn’t be more Australian.

Where most competitive driving is about chasing deltas, the sole purpose of professional burnouts is to kill tyres as quickly and theatrically as possible. Most drivers settle for low-slung utes with skinny tyres, but Brett opts for a hefty Hilux with off-road tyres. With over 1,000bhp from a s’charged ‘big-block Chev’, it chews through 100 litres of methanol to produce wheel speeds of 229mph that can turn new rubber to dust in under a minute.

Keen to show me what it’s made of, Brett starts the mighty Toyota in third, mashes the throttle and smoke starts to bellow from the tyres as if it’s on a switch. In competition, drivers are judged on instant smoke, constant smoke, volume of smoke and driving skill. Brett whips the pickup into vicious pirouettes around the arena. As an act, it’s one of the most violent things I’ve ever witnessed. Smoke is sucked into my lungs as fire belches out of side pipes and chunks of rubber thwack me in the face. I’m pretty sure it’s the closest thing you can get to being waterboarded by a volcano.

Incredibly, things don’t stop when the tyres go pop. Or even when the Hilux self-immolates. Nope, normality only resumes when the fuel tank runs dry… 60 seconds later.