Street Machine Summernats 37 kicks off on Thursday 2 January at Exhibition Park in Canberra. These days, the event hits the rev limiter from day one, with the City Cruise, the Last Chance Wildcard Shootout, Fringe Festival, the Meguiar’s Great Uncover and more all kicking off on Thursday.

It is going to be a massive year, but here are five things we’re really looking forward to checking out:

Skid Row Pad Power Hour

Introduced for Street Machine Summernats 32, the Skid Row concept has been a wildly successful addition to the Summernats program. Skid Row provides a lane for cruisers to safely burn rubber with impunity – and to the delight of the crowd.

This year, the team have added a second Skid Row, this time on the hallowed ground of the burnout pad itself. The Skid Row Pad Power Hour will run for an hour from 6.30pm on both Friday and Saturday.

The Power Hour will be open to all entrants, except for burnout competitors and/or noisy cars identified as ‘Red or Yellow Cruising.’ The usual Skid Row rules will apply, no popping tyres or static skids. Exiting Skid Row on rims will result in Motorsport Australia disciplinary action, potentially including exclusion from future events. Entrants will receive a heads-up via text and email to remind you when it is game on.

Methanol Madness

Another new feature is Methanol Madness. As the name suggests, all the toughest, loudest, methanol-huffing machines will be thumping around the cruise route at the same time. Look out for them at 11am Friday and 5.30pm Saturday.

Flinty hits the other side of the pad

This year will mark Peter Flint’s 10th year filming the Summernats skids for Street Machine and his own Finty460 channel. To celebrate, Flinty is bringing his OLDHOON XC Falcon ute all the way from Perth to try his hand at the Open Burnout comp.

Justin Walshe’s VX Clubsport R8

Justin Walshe entered Aussie drag racing history at the Winternationals this year, taking out not only the XPRO Nitro Funny Car event win, but also the inaugural championship title.

You’d think the insanity of nitro flopper racing would be enough for Justin, but instead he’s gone and built himself a bonkers VX Clubsport R8. Only 10 weeks ago, he commissioned Andy ‘Fireball’ McConnell to turn a Facebook Marketplace refugee into a certified Tuff Street warrior, with drag racing legend Aaron Hambridge from APM taking care of the engine build.

Grimace does the Nats!

We’ve always had a ball bringing our Carnage projects to Summernats, including putting Farmtruck and AZN into our twin-turbo V8-powered Mazda MX-5!

This year, however we are bringing our most powerful project to Exhibition Park in Canberra, Grimace! Grimace is our twin-turbo, 427 LSX-powered VS Commodore ute. Despite limited testing, Grimace completed Drag Challenge 2024 and went all the way to the finals of the Kenda Nightmare at the Bend event. So naturally, we’re pumped to see what the ute can do at the MPW dyno, down Skid Row and more!