Melbourne’s often fickle weather sure helped over 540 entrants and event promoter Jon Davison, turning on three glorious days of sunshine broken only  by melting tyres, screaming high-powered engines and an intoxicating atmosphere of pure horse power. The EASTERNATS is unique as it is the only event that allows open slather on the racetrack for cruising, not to mention the burnouts – which are at least the equal of the Summernats.

Holden and Ford were well represented with V8 SuperCar drivers taking spectators and fans for laps around the track. If you played your cards right, you could have ended up with Jason Bright, John Bowe, Greg Murphy, Garth Tander, Will Davison, Leanne Ferrier or Paul Weel taking you for a squirt around one of the most exciting race tracks in Australia.

Friday was absolute bedlam as people swarmed in by the thousands. With entrants up 70 per cent, it was no surprise to most that spectator numbers were up substantially to a claimed 25,000, almost as big as the V8 SuperCars. Cruising was the highlight of Friday's activities and it was straight into the business with the start of Burnout qualifying.

You really have to take you hat off to the Victorians, they sure know how to do the biggest burnouts. The cars that lined up to have a lash seemed to go on forever and it took all of Friday and Saturday qualifying sessions to get through them all, with the top 50 going into Sundays burnout final. Even though pressed for time, Davo's brilliant and polite officials got everybody through.

Come Saturday morning, the track gates were opened at 9.00 am for cruising and after a few hours of getting sideways and doing as many burnouts in front of the crowd as possible, the driving events fired up with the Go-to-Whoa, Time Trial and a new event, the Corkscrew, kicking ass in the front straight.

The Corkscrew comprised of a series of witches hats in a straight line - about 5 cars length apart - with a huge tyre in the centre. The object of the exercise was to weave in and out through the hats, then chuck a heli around the tyre - without hitting the guard rail, hats or tyre and cover the course as quickly as possible. Needless to say, only those with excellent hand-eye and pedal-steer co-ordination excelled at what quickly became a dead-set nail-biter in front of a huge crowd. Saturday afternoon saw the grandstand and pit area bulging as the Street Drags started. The rules were simple: "Run what ya brung, and hope ya brung enough."

Unlike most drag-racing events, the track was unprepared and entrants were restricted in both tyre size and the amount of boost and nitrous-oxide they could run. By all accounts, Sunday's final was going to be hugely competitive, though some saw the Street Drags as another opportunity to do burnouts. At the conclusions of the Street Drags, it was time to separate the bulls from the pullers in the burnouts. All the big hitter were there.

For Saturdays burnout eliminations, New South Welshmen Tony DeOliveria, Shannon Petersen and Gary Myers had to go head to head with not just each other but also the Victorians Peter and Debbie Gray, newcomer Jeremy Neuman and last year's joint winner Steven Bellman in his 308ci Gemini panel van. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who are prepared to kick their rods out for the chance to make themselves famous. I can't even recall so much carnage at one event.