Given it had been two years since their last event, Summernats co-owner Andy Lopez was thrilled from the very moment the street car festival’s 34th iteration kicked off at Exhibition Park last week.
Having soaked up every minute of the four-day event, one of the moments Mr Lopez will remember dearly was watching the very first car of the festival roll into scrutineering.
“Just having that sense that we’re back,” he said, “it was a wonderful feeling.”
Despite COVID-19 case records being broken daily, patronage at Summernats hit the capacity limits allowed by their exemption to run the event.
They had “around 80,000” people through the gates and more than 2,000 cars over the four days.
While losing a few vendors due to complications around interstate travel, Mr Lopez said those who did make their way to Exhibition Park had “a great time”.
With 80-85 per cent of Summernats visitors coming from interstate, despite some Canberra-based detractors, organisers and the ACT Government see the event as a key tourism driver that brings around $30 million to the local economy annually.
While attendance was down a fair margin on the 119,000+ who have come in years past, Mr Lopez said the capacity limit of 20,000 patrons a day only had to be enforced on the Saturday.
For that reason, he expects, even with reduced capacities, for the event’s economic impact to remain “around the $30 million mark”.
“You can get a sense of it,” he said, “you couldn’t get a hotel in Canberra over the weekend and restaurants around town were really busy.”
Crowds well behaved overall despite Fyshwick burnouts
Despite its successes, the festival didn’t go off without a hitch. On Thursday 6 January, the event’s first night, police were called out to burnouts and hooning along Yallourn Street, Fyshwick, where around 2,000 people and 1,000 vehicles had gathered.
When police arrived on the scene, one of their vehicles was surrounded by a large section of the crowd who blocked the police car’s path while others threw bottles and shot fireworks at it.
In separate police activity, three vehicles were seized following burnout activity in areas near Exhibition Park that same evening.
Mr Lopez later told media the drivers of those vehicles, none of which were Summernats vehicles, were “not our people”.
“As far as we understand it, the vehicles that were causing the trouble, they’re not Summernats engines, they don’t have our stickers on them,” he said.
The following day, ACT Policing Detective Inspector Adrian Craft said police enjoy “a great relationship” with Summernats organisers.
“Summernats is a festival that’s been coming to the ACT for 30 years, and by and large it hasn’t been a great problem for us,” he said.
“But there seems to be, like in many crowds, a fringe element who seem intent on doing something other than celebrating the actual event themselves.”
Inside the fences at Exhibition Park, Mr Lopez said crowds were well behaved over the course of the event.
“It always gets a bit wild and woolly on Saturday afternoon, and it was particularly boisterous this year,” he said.
“The crowd goes pretty wild, but it’s really good natured, it’s fun. We worked really hard interacting with the crowd in different areas where it was getting a bit loose.”
While savouring the moment and certainly making the most of Summernats 34 after a year’s break, planning for 2023’s Summernats 35 is already well under way, having started late last year.
After 34 years, they’ve got the event management side of things running like a well-oiled machine.
“She’s a grand old lady the Summernats at 34,” Mr Lopez smiled. “It’s like dog years; 34 years in events is like 100 years.”
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