Day Two – FRIDAY 6 JANUARY
THE second day of Summernats dawned with great promise. Day One was an absolute belter, and the Friday program boasted even more highlights. Haltech Horsepower Heroes opened for business in the MPW Dyno Cell with a lofty 1422hp pull from the ESP Racing FPV Tornado ute, followed soon thereafter by a 1056hp run from Michael Silk’s 10,500rpm Sr20ve-powered Datto 1200 wagon – the first four-figure dyno pull for a four-pot in Horsepower Heroes history.
It didn’t matter whether you fancied full-blown, mirrorson-the-ground Elite cars, genuine Street cars or Tuff Street monsters – all three classes were on display for punters to froth over throughout the day.
Up on the pad, the Burnout Championship eliminations took place, with Australia’s keenest skidders vying for a place in Sunday’s finals.
The cruise route was positively heaving, with the energy continuing to build. It was so packed out with toughies that some entrants reckoned it took forever to complete a full lap in what was undoubtedly Australia’s coolest traffic jam.
In the evening, Summernats fans were forced to choose between the chilled vibe of the Fringe Festival at Braddon and the veritable smorgasbord of Aussie rockers taking the stage at EPIC. Shannon Noll went full rock star, stacking it off a speaker and rolling his ankle, but toughed it out and finished his set like the consummate professional he is before being carted off in an ambo.
Then, just as the national treasure that is Daryl Braithwaite expertly belted out his anthemic tune The Horses on the main arena, the news dropped that all tickets for the Saturday of Summernats had sold out for the first time in the event’s 35-year history. We had officially reached Peak Summernats.
THIS was it – the first and only completely sold-out day in the 35-year history of Street Machine Summernats. Vehicle entries; buddy passes; general admission tickets; season passes; Gold, Silver and Platinum passes – you name it, any means by which you could enter Exhibition Park in Canberra on Saturday 7 January were completely tapped out. The venue had never before reached capacity (which we’re told is somewhere in the vicinity of 35,000 humans) and yet, here we were. How’s that for a freakin’ car show?
If you reckon that sounds a little hectic, you’d be right. The cruise route was mental, with all the requisite mayhem one might expect. It all reached fever pitch around 6pm, when event management made the call to shut the route down and give everyone the chance to cool their boots.
That being said, all day long there were so many people doing so much cool shit that it’s hard to sum it all up here, but let’s give it a shot.
Australia’s beastly burnout scene continues to flourish and progress year on year, and Summernats is the grand final, so it was standing room only up at the pad as the Burnout Championship qualifications raged on throughout the day. Then the big dogs took to the pad in the afternoon for the Burnout Masters quallies, setting the stage for Sunday’s finals.
Meanwhile, a huge crowd gathered for the show ’n’ shine presentations, with Frank Russo’s fattypowered VC Commodore SL/E scoring the big gong in Tuff Street judging, while Matt Mcintosh’s freshly unveiled HQ Statesman and Peter Lewis’s Astill Design-built BOSS XC picked up Top Judged Elite and People’s Choice respectively, along with a swathe of other awards in the Elite class. Nick Chronopoulos’s gorgeous VL Calais earned Top Judged in the Street class from a field of stone-cold stunners that made a bloke proud to be a fan of Aussie streeters.
The highlight for the day over in the MPW Dyno Cell was Cody Hunt’s epic URLUZN E-series HSV Clubsport wagon casually belting out 1611hp at the hubs, with the promise of more still in Sunday’s finals if required. Ain’t no thing…
Then there was the equally competitive yet intriguingly colourful side of Summernats: events like Fashions on the Field, the Body Art Nationals and the Dirty Mullet Fest, which took place on the main stage around lunchtime. The modified lawnmower racing was also being contested nearby, and that was serious business for members of the Australian Ride-on Lawn Mower Association – some of the kindest and most accommodating people you’d ever hopetomeet. yours truly was fortunate enough to be offered a spin on a 50hp Class A mower, and I don’t mind telling you that they’re utterly terrifying – but an absolute blast to drive. I need one in my life.
The Saturday night entertainment is considered by many to bethe crescendo of Summernats, and it was always of paramount importance to the late Chic Henry. ’Nats 35 was the first that the Godfather of Summernats wasn’t around to witness in person, and amongst all the chaos, that remained front of mind. Indeed, nobody at this year’s event would be there if it weren’t for Chic’s vision, unwavering passion, willingness to roll the dice, and decades of hard yakka.
And so, once the Supercruise drew to a close and the Saturday-night entertainment began to hit its straps, one third of Chic’s ashes were quietly strapped to a firework and sent into orbit above the biggest Summernats the world had ever seen. What an incredible legacy that bloke has forged.
ONE THIRD OF CHIC HENRY’S ASHES WERE STRAPPED TO A FIREWORK AND SENT INTO ORBIT ABOVE THE BIGGEST SUMMERNATS THE WORLD HAD EVER SEEN