The complaints about women being harrassed and cars treated poorly by maggotted bogan spectactors can be ignored. They are a thing from Summernats of years passed, but not this year.
On Thursday, there was a short, fat security woman on the cruise route outside Skid Row and she was a frOcking bitch. Power tripping to a ridiculous degree and not having reasonable judgement. She gave me a 'final warning' for some super mild bevahiour which was not out of step with normal Summernats cruise route antics at all. I had those super fat old P Zero Pirellis that were aching for some abuse although I certainly wasn't liberal with the smoke. My mate behind me in TUF-253 (bright green Mk1 Escort) got a 'final warning' at the same time and I don't think he even lost traction... he had his huge slicks on the rear and he treats them very nicely.
Everyone in the entrants group was complaining about that cow. She may have been literally the only staff member causing issues and of course word spread fast. The other staff I encountered all seemed fine.
By the time Saturday arvo came by... holy moly. Main Street was basically devoid of rules. Andy Lopez was there and was all for it. He was the GOAT in the driver's and spectactor's opinion. The security were super cool about everything (cow described above was nowhere to be seen at this time). There were 1,000+ horsepower cars doing 15+ second burnouts, ridiculously high density of ridiculous cars that could not be driven on the road, people everywhere. A lot of energy and it was golden hour after a hot day. Beautiful evening if you don't mind going deaf from open pipes, being asphyxiated by tyre smoke, plus plenty of methanol in the schnoz and eyes for good measure.
The biggest thing that happens which is so damn annoying is hyper-excited spectactors wanting to run out and be right up close yelling in the windows of a car doing a burnout. I don't understand why they feel compelled to do that. It doesn't make the spectacle for the crowd any better, often interrupts the driving, and when the visibility is so bloody compromised, it just increases the risk of things going wrong with traffiic that is of course going both ways. If you really get a hard-on for big burnouts, can you not just enjoy them from like... the side of the road which is like 3m or less away from the car anyway? No mesh, no glass panels, just some intermittent below-waist-height concrete barriers. Not exactly a sterile experience!
For people who liked seeing tyres really getting punished up close, this event was probably the best Summernats ever I would guess.
I kinda went there for the show element thinking that the judging side of things would be enjoyable to try being a part of, and must say I was a bit disappointed with my experience of that.
Also, my car was out of action for a day, it developed a problem that I was too exhausted (from the rush trying to get the car there) to be able to figure out until after dark that night after I gave myself a bit of a siesta.
Overall, it isn't really my kind of event, but I set it as a goal and I'm happy to have reached it, although not exactly in the ideal state (as far as how ready the car was, me being adequately rested and relaxed to enjoy it, etc.) and that was compounded badly by my friend writing his Torana off on the way there in the horrific weather conditions on the highway. So a bit of a mixed set of emotions there, but the event organisers I think have done quite well and I think a lot of people had a really good time.
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