Fresh off his first Pro Burnout event win at Northern Nats, the Charters Towers driver is packing up his all-iron, built-bottom-end VX Commodore ORWHAT and heading to the Red Centre.

Ryan “Bubba” Lofts had a good weekend at Northern Nats. A really good one. He took out the Pro Burnouts and Power Skids in ORWHAT, budget-built VX Commodore — his first Pro Burnout event win. And a win like that comes with a very simple consequence: everyone told him he had to go to Red CentreNATS. He didn’t need much convincing.

“I love Red CentreNATS,” Bubba says. “I’ve always felt like I’ve done well out there.” He’d actually planned to stay home this year. “I wasn’t going to go,” he admits. “And then I was just like, oh, well, I can afford to go now.”

It’s a fitting next step for a bloke whose whole career has been built around doing what he can with what he’s got, surrounded by a bunch of mates and the legends at WOT Engines who are just as happy loading up the cars and heading down the road as they are standing around the shed.

His introduction to cars wasn’t even through burnouts. “I’ve actually always been into four-wheel drives,” he says, “but when I was younger, I just started with a six-cylinder Commodore, just doing the local burnouts.” Then he had his first V8 skid. “I went for a skid in someone’s V8 and I was like, oh, this has to happen.”

Around eight or nine years ago, Bubba bought ORWHAT as a donor VX Commodore, planning to pull the engine and sell the shell. His mates had other ideas. “We were like, oh, we should just strip this, and we’ll just sell the shell later,” he says. They never sold it.

Instead, ORWHAT gradually evolved from a temporary toy into the blown Pro Burnout car it is today. And while it now carries the hardware and attitude of a serious competition machine, the philosophy behind it hasn’t changed much. “I don’t think there’s really a difference in going pro,” he says. “It’s just more expensive.”

For him, burnouts were never about who’s got the biggest engine or the most expensive car. They’re about the feeling that comes with sitting on the start line, knowing there’s nothing left to do but plant the foot. “It’s just the adrenaline,” he says. “There’s a rush. When you’re at the start line and you stand on the pedal, it’s just… adrenaline, I reckon.”

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t learned to temper the chaos. For years his approach was simple: get on the pad and run amok, bouncing the car off the limiter and putting on as wild a show as possible. But after some advice from fellow competitor Codie Free, he tried something different at Northern Nats.”He said, slow down when you’re doing your skids,” he says. So, he did.

“I took a step back a little bit and didn’t just party so much. I guess I wanted to do better.” The result was his first Pro Burnout event win. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I couldn’t even talk, actually.” The win came alongside a Power Skids victory too, adding another piece of silverware to a car that’s built its reputation without the eye-watering budgets found in some of the country’s top Pro Burnout machinery.

“It’s just an all-iron LS with a built bottom end,” he explains. “That’s actually a pretty budget kind of build. There’s not big-dollar parts in that. Some of the other cars have probably got more money in their motor than I’ve got in my whole car.”

That’s deliberate. “I probably can’t afford it,” he says. “Where we’re at is where we could afford. We’re strong believers of, if you can’t afford to replace it, it’s hard.” Even with a Pro Burnout car in the shed, he still does it for fun.

“If it’s not fun, I’m not really interested usually.” That attitude carries over to why Red CentreNATS is different from the usual burnout and drag racing scene, where the two disciplines run at the same time and competitors barely see each other all weekend. “At Red CentreNATS, you get to watch the drags or help our mates that are out there for the drags,” he says. He’s also keen to have a crack at the dirt drags himself, if he can sort a set of tyres in time. “We were thinking about doing the dirt drags. I’m just trying to find some tyres to do it.”

The setting is a big part of the pull too. “Enjoy the drive there and home,” he says, when asked what he’d tell a first timer. “The travel is one of the best parts, because you don’t see that part of Australia ever.” Once they arrive, the Friday night burnouts and street parade are high on his list — but so is exploring Alice Springs itself. “You’re not just going to a city that’s like, oh yeah, the burnout pad’s here,” he says. “It’s actually, I don’t know, in the middle of Australia. It’s just different.”

His advice to anyone thinking about entering is just as straightforward. “Start off with what you can afford. Don’t think that you have to go — you don’t have to do anything to impress others. Do what you want, and you can afford, and do it for fun.”

That’s the same philosophy that took ORWHAT from a donor VX Commodore to a Pro Burnout winner, and now has it pointed south towards the Red Centre — with a bloke behind the wheel who’s just starting to make people take notice.

Entries and Chrome Passes are slowly disappearing for the 12th annual Red CentreNATS, presented by LMCT+. Make sure you grab yours and get ready to head to Alice Springs from 3 to 6 September 2026.