THERE were a lot of changes for this year’s Motorvation, the biggest being the move from a three-day event to one day. If you haven’t been keeping up with the news from the Perth Motorplex, the changes were due to the previous long-time management standing down and VenuesWest, a state government statutory body, taking over. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as a lot of the previous volunteer staff were still on hand to ensure that the event ran smoothly.

While it might seem like a bit of a downer, the one-day-only format actually worked pretty well. The traders and entrants set up on the Friday and could camp on site, and then the public were let in on the Saturday at 10am with the event winding up around 11pm, so it was a pretty full-on day of cruising, burnouts and checking out cars. Another big change this year was the switch from a dedicated elite hall tent to an outdoor show ‘n’ shine gig.

While there was no official Grand Champion award this year, Kevin Scheepens and his HQ one-tonner scored the Top Judged prize. It’s been upgraded with a WB Statesman front, LS3 engine swap and a true-fire flame job that covers most of the cab. Kevin wasn’t afraid to give it some curry on the cruise track, with smoky burnouts and powerskids the order of the day.

In the Megaskid Max powerskid comp, Matt James’s UNWANTED blown and injected VF Commodore ute blazed them the hardest taking home first place ahead of Mick Hamon’s WIDE OPEN Clubsport and Nick Smith’s JOBZON Torana in third.

Aspo burnouts saw Colin Byrne’s SEWERSIDE V8-powered Holden Shuttle van take out the top spot, with Jason Tanian’s KENOATH in second and Jake Higgs’s FOGGIN third.

As for the big blown cars, Mick Hamon was on fire – not literally – with WIDE OPEN taking out first place ahead of Matt James’s UNWANTED – also not on fire for once – and Anthony Page’s PAGEY in second and third respectively.

After setting both ends of his car on fire at Summernats, Justen Brown went and got himself some rustic (rusty?) paint from Bunnings and gave STRUGLIN a new old look

Another West Aussie that put in the hard yards to compete at Summernats and Motorvation was Glenn Taylor in BARK. The blown six-pot is a screamer and has no problems smoking the place out

Jason Tanian has given KENOATH a bit of a birthday recently, swapping the XF front for an XD. The screaming Clevo sounded super-strong out on the pad and he managed a hard-fought second place

Check out the video for our highlights reel.

MEGASKID MAX

1st Matt James UNWANTED

2nd Mick Hamon WIDE OPEN

3rd Nick Smith JOBZON

NATURALLY ASPIRATED BURNOUTS

1st Colin Byrne SEWERSIDE

2nd Jason Tanian KENOATH

3rd Jake Higgs FOGGIN

BLOWN BURNOUTS

1st Mick Hamon WIDE OPEN

2nd Matt James UNWANTED

3rd Anthony Page PAGEY