28/09/2026
We brought two cars to AutoFest this year, with driving SKDMRK in the Rising Stars class.
Charlotte hadn’t driven the car since January, so jumping behind the wheel and skidding in front of a massive crowd was a tough ask. The pressure was unreal, but by her third skid she was finally starting to get the hang of it!
We’ll try again at LS Fest. It all comes down to seat time now—building her confidence and developing her driving skills. The support everyone gets behind Charlotte with is incredible, and I can’t thank you all enough.
As for NUTOUT—the Llama Engineering 6.0 was absolutely on song!
We took it fairly easy in qualifying and quickly discovered the pad surface was like sandpaper. We nearly made it to the one-minute mark before the tyres popped, but as I was rolling towards the exit, the car shut off. It turned out the ignition relay had officially left the chat!
The boys got straight onto it and had the issue sorted pretty quickly.
I wasn’t sure we had done enough to make the Top 10 in such a massive field—but it turned out we had!
For the finals, we fitted the biggest tyres we could, lined up and sent it as hard as I could. Unfortunately, my fairly average driving skills on this pad caught me out in the exit chute. I over-rotated, stayed in one spot for too long, and up in flames we went!
The tyres banged at around 40 seconds—not even enough time to register any points.
It wasn’t our year, but a massive congratulations to GHOST Burnout Bully for taking the top spot. Well deserved, mate!
I really enjoyed the pad layout, the atmosphere and, most of all, the massive screen. It made such a difference, allowing everyone to see the action. The camera angles and replays just kept getting better as the day went on.
My personal highlight was watching Max Ireland go out and absolutely destroy a set of tyres with his dad beside him in a borrowed car. A huge shout-out to Eddy ( LIL NUTTER) for lending them your car, mate!
Our burnout scene is in very safe hands with this next generation of young drivers coming through.
There’s plenty to unpack from AutoFest, and we’ll be sitting down to talk about all of it in the next episode of NUTCHAT!
Hatton Photography - photos
