Australia’s Burnout King is Coming to Sick Powerfest
The name Andrew ‘Lynchy’ Lynch probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to most Americans. But down in his native Australia, Lynchy is a bonafide folk hero. Why? Because he does the sickest burnouts in a country where it’s virtually the national pastime.
Lynchy is the current Burnout Masters champion, and he’s heading to Sick Powerfest in Michigan on Friday, August 9 with a bunch of his Aussie burnout mates to pop tires and blow minds. What’s fascinating about Andrew is he didn’t get to be a cult hero with a huge budget. He chose a smaller car he could throw around fitted with just enough naturally aspirated horsepower to keep the tire smoke pouring. He’s looking forward to showing Americans just what the Australians have been going crazy about for decades now.
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See the Sick World Burnout Championship and enjoy the thrills of the Dodge Hellcat Drift Experience, Dodge Drag Experience featuring Demon 170s, and the Dodge Hornet Offroad. Plus the Sick Spit Show & Shine, music, food trucks and more!
“At the moment the scene here in America is really not comparable because Australia has been doing it for so long,” he said, while gearing up to compete in the the Sick World Burnout Championship at Sick Powerfest after thrilling fans at Powercruise USA in Brainerd, MN last weekend.
“In Australia there are big competitions happening almost every weekend in all parts of the country, and everybody works together to reach the end goal, which is Summernats. Whereas over here it’s a bit different. You have different events going on, and there are new ones popping up, which is cool. But it will take time before America has their shit sorted out and you’ve got people going to events with an end goal in mind, a grand final if you will, like we have in Summernats.”
Drag racers have been doing burnouts since the 1960s. Doing a burnout before a race serves several purposes: it helps to clear the racing surface of debris, to lay down rubber in a groove on the startline, and to heat up air in the rear tires. Those are the main functions. One of the added benefits, of course, is entertainment. Show me a racer that lays down long, smokey burnouts before making a run, and I’ll show you a certified crowd-pleaser.
Somewhere along the line, Australians figured out that burnouts would make for an exciting spectator sport in their own right. Australia’s history with big-time burnout competitions goes back to the late-1980s, around the time of the first Street Machine Summernats events, where high-horsepower muscle cars peeled off straight-line skids in front of crowds of rabid fans.
Summernats is the ultimate competition for Australian burnout enthusiasts.
Thirty-six years later, burnouts in Australia have evolved considerably. The cars are now purpose-built weapons, often with show-quality finishes and big-dollar blown motors. They no longer just drive in a straight-line but instead are whipped around a burnout “pad” in wild displays of what could roughly be described as drifting gone wild. Judging has been standardized nationally, and there is now a quasi-pro tour made up of various events around the country where the prize money regularly runs into the tens of thousands.
Burnouts are such a big deal Down Under, there’s even a Burnout Masters game app, where you can play as ‘LYNCHY’ and many of the other notable cars. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to call Lynchy a household name in Australia, he’s well known enough to be sweated for selfies wherever he goes.
“It’s actually refreshing being over here because not many people know who I am,” Lynchy said. “I can go to a meet and then have dinner afterwards and I don’t get recognized, nobody wants to come up and get pictures with me, I can just hang out. It’s actually quite good.”
One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is that Street Machine Summernats remains the ultimate proving ground. Held every January in the nation’s capital city, Canberra, Summernats plays host to the Burnout Masters. It’s basically the Super Bowl of burnouts, and Lynchy is their Tom Brady.
“It all started in 2015,” he explained. “I had a plan in my head that I was going to tip the car into the burnout pad in reverse fashion to how it had always been done at Summernats, and that I was going to eventually land back down the entry chute. I pulled it off and everyone talked about it all weekend. Nobody can remember who won the burnout comp that year, but everyone remembers that.”
Check out the insane angle on Lynchy’s front wheels as the smoke pours from the rears.
Lynchy is the current Burnout Masters champion, having taken the crown earlier this year in what was the most popular victory Summernats had ever seen. You see, he had long been the people’s champ, but he too often lacked whatever burnout judges were looking for. Actually, lacked is the wrong word. He probably could’ve played to the judges, but he instead played to the crowd, and this is how his legend became solidified.
“The judging criteria never suited me at all,” he said. “But it has actually evolved over time and it’s a lot better for me now. Instead of the emphasis being on more smoke and slower speeds, they’ve gone more the way of driving skill, ripping corners and driving fast on the limiter, and I’ve always just done it this way. So I haven’t changed my style, but the point-scoring system has gone around and all of a sudden it has started to suit me.”
You may be familiar with the term soul surfer. Well, Lynchy is a soul skidder. He doesn’t burn rubber to score points or win prizes. He does it for the love, for the rush, and because he was born to do it. Just like Van Gogh had his paint and canvases, or Dylan had his guitar and vocal chords, Lynchy has his steering wheel and foot pedals as a means with which to express himself. His level of car control within such a chaotic framework is simply astonishing. To see him rip up a burnout pad is to watch a true artist at work.
“It’s always good to win and take home some cash, but I’m not going out there to sell my soul for a bit of cash,” he said.
Another special thing about Lynchy is that he defies the saying: “You gotta be blown to be known.” Almost all of the big-time burnout cars in Australia are blown-and-injected monsters. Lynchy is a bit of an anomaly because his Corolla is powered by a comparatively modest naturally aspirated 6.0-liter L98 that spits out around 650hp.
“I’ve never really considered going blown because I’ve seen other mates do it and then when they have problems, the car gets sidelined for months because they can’t afford it,” he said. “I like that I can fix everything on my car myself and parts aren’t too expensive. And then to keep the dream alive and take out Burnout Masters at Summernats, well, I definitely won’t be getting a blower now.”
Sick Powerfest Powered By Dodge and M1 Concourse will be one massive day of automotive madness at M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan. Strategically placed one day prior to Roadkill Nights, the centerpiece of the Friday event will be the World Burnout Championship, featuring the world’s best burnout competitors from Australia, the USA and Canada competing for $25,000 in prize money.
Joining Lynchy at M1 will be fellow Australians Kyle Douglas in his ‘LUXIFER’ Toyota HiLux, Adrian Cuthbertson in his ‘SKIDMA’ Mitsubishi Sigma, Craig Bailey in his ‘IMPOSTER’ Holden VF Commodore ute, Pat McLaughlin in his ‘BATLIN’ VL Commodore, Mick Hinchy in his ‘CL1KB8’ VF Commodore wagon, Kieran Barber in his ‘CUDDLES’ VH Commodore, and Jack Harrison in his ‘JACKOS LUX’ HiLux. Phew!
“It’s a huge burnout pad at M1 so I’ll be concentrating on going as fast as I can and not hitting stuff,” said Lynchy.
