TRUE NORTH

AFTER MONTHS OF RAIN, THE DRAG RACING DROUGHT BROKE AT SPRINGMOUNT RACEWAY WITH NORTHERN NATS 8

- LARA WILDE

SPRINGMOUNT Raceway's three-day Northern Nats event is famous for offering its entrants myriad ways to smash tyres and burn copious fossil fuels. Drags, burnouts, roll racing, go-to-whoa and Skid Row are all on the table, making the most of the venue's A-grade quarter-mile and spacious burnout pad. Located an hour's drive south-west of Cairns, Springmount is nestled in the foothills of the 907m-high Walsh Bluff, making it one of the most picturesque strips in Australia.

This year, Northern Nats partnered with the crew behind Street Machine Summernats to help officiate the burnout comps, supercharge the show car side of things and generally promote the hell out of the event.

The biggest change this brought to the program was the addition of a Motorvation-style Supercruise each day, which also incorporated a dual-car Skid Row. Watching top-shelf burnout cars shred rubber side-by-side was spectacular and will no doubt become one of the event's signature features.

Even so, the burnouts remain the big crowd-puller at Northern Nats. While Springmount is a long way to travel for many, that didn't stop both the Open and Pro Burnout comps being very well subscribed, with the big names from interstate including Todd Stewart's UNFAZD and Mark Siracusa in ONIT from the ACT; Scott Yates in YATEZ, Tim Brown's CEMBLO and Rick Fuller in LSONE from Victoria; Ryan Pearson's HOLDON and the S1CKO/GM176 of Jake Myers from NSW; and Chris Orchard in THE GAME all the way from WA.