JAKE Edwards once again ruled the rollers in the Street Machine Summernats Horsepower Heroes dyno hall, taking out his sixth win and cementing his legend, but he didn’t have it all his own way. The 2008 Horsepower Hero Craig Munro brought his twin-turbocharged VX ClubSport TRYHRD back to the Nats to have a crack at taking down Jake, qualifying on Saturday with 798hp after a leaking blow-off valve left him running 15psi well short of his normal 40psi.

Drama started due to both Craig and Jake wanting to run last for Sunday’s finals. In the interests of fairness Adam Rogash and the MPW Performance crew running the dyno chose to put the three finalists’ entrant numbers onto slips of paper and had random spectators draw them out of a hat to set the running order. This put third-placed Greg South up first in his twin-turbo 427cui LSX HQ sedan, followed by Craig and then Jake.

Apparently unhappy with running second Craig jumped into his car and left, only to come back 15 minutes later to park the HSV in the hall with ice on the engine. It was at this point the drama kicked into high gear, with Craig leaving and nobody able to find him as his timeslot approached.

Greg rolled off a 747.9hp and backed it up with 727hp but a big pop of flame out a breather tank saw him shut it down after just two runs. With no sign of Craig the dyno crew tried ringing and ended up putting a 10 minute limit on him coming back, after which he’d be disqualified.

The tension was crazy as the crowd counted down the last 10 seconds, and they cheered loudly as the time ran out and Craig was disqualified, with Jake firing up his LH Torana straight away to bang it on the rollers, to even louder cheers. Having pushed the bore of the old Merlin big block Chev up to 4.5in giving him 477 cubes with the same cast heads and 110mm turbo, Jake wasn’t thinking he would record the same huge numbers his legendary sedan has made before.

After qualifying with 1461hp on Saturday, he backed it up with a 1593hp at 34psi and then 1663hp at 40psi on Sunday to take the win.