From the vault – HPF Summernats 09

Street Commodores – 5/02/2009

Another Summernats has come and gone with mixed emotions for the team at HPF, as a lot of you will know Lyle lemon passed away early last year and it was with his wife Cheree’s consent that we decided to campaign MR PSI at this year’s HP Heroes competition at the Summernats in his honor. It was Lyle’s goal when he built MR PSI to win HP Heroes competition and I felt it was the least we could do to honour his memory.

Apart from the numerous customer cars up at the Nats, we took along three cars in particular, MRPSI to compete in HP hero’s, our blown blue XR8 Ute which we set-up for the burnout comp and a Chrysler 300C SRT8 with a stroked 426 Hemi topped with a Whipple 3.4litre supercharger and although it wasn’t completely finished we had to take just to show it off.

This year for the first time we also joined forces with Yella Terra and displayed our cars out front of the Traders pavilion on the Yella Terra stand, which was a busy part of the Summernats and gave us the opportunity to catch-up with a lot people. One of the highlights for me was having MR PSI on display only to have Troy Trepanier come over and start looking over it, after about 15mins of him checking it out and asking questions, he commented it was one of his favorite cars he had seen at the show all weekend and really admired the workmanship, for me that was BIG, Troy is a legend in custom car building and for him to say that about a car built entirely by the guys at HPF meant a lot..

The dyno competition was well and truly underway when I booked in Friday morning to run MRPSI for its qualifying run at 4PM that afternoon. I headed back to the cars to organize to get dry ice from the local BOC dealer, which I had pre ordered. I called to confirm their address only to be told there was no dry ice and their delivery that was meant come was not coming until next week…ahhhrrr. It was straight on the phone and after about an hour and $100 bucks worth of calls I had organized to get the last 60kg of dry ice in Sydney brought down to be my old mate Gary Pope. This meant I had to push back qualifying to Saturday morning which wasn’t the end of the world but just meant if we did have any issues in qualifying we would only have Saturday night to work on it.

Not competing in HP Hero’s on Friday meant it gave me an opportunity to line up for the burnout comp which believe it or not in the 10 years I have been going to the Summernats I have never entered. After waiting in the line for around 4 hours I realized why I had never entered it but I was determined at least once to have a go and say I had competed in the burnout competition at the Summernats. Even though I am no stranger to doing burnouts, I certainly was a little nervous when it was finally my turn to “light-em” up and to make things worse they told me as I got to within 5 cars of the start line that they were running out of time and we may have to come back on Sunday…What The… As it turned out I got my opportunity and “low and behold” I made it into Sunday’s finals with the car in one piece.

Saturday arrived and MRPSI hit the dyno for qualifying, the word was there really wasn’t anything making much over 1000rwhp, so we took a conservative approach and kept the boost at reasonable  level and proceeded to reel off two 1400+rwhp runs without much fuss, which placed us as first qualifier for Sundays finals in our class and overall.

Saturday night was dinner with all the crew and the boys from Yella Terra and a reflection on the day’s events, this then typically perpetuated into a wild night of partying to give us the mandatory hangover on Summernats Sunday morning. We prepared MR PSI for the Dyno and lined up the XR8 Ute ready for the burnout finals. Being the highest qualifier MR PSI was the last car to run and as always the wait was a little nerve-racking, I had high expectations to deliver a trophy to Lyles wife, not to mention I was lined up for the burnout finals at the Summernats to “fry-em” in front of 1000s of people.

12.30 came and MR PSI hit the dyno for the finals in good shape and again we decided to take a conservative approach as there really wasn’t any need to push hard, the thought of giving the car back to Cheree in one piece along with the HP Hero trophy was very appealing, so we kept the boost at 30psi and managed a 1533rwhp which gave us the win in our class and overall HP Hero, not to mention me a big sigh of relief.

After the HP Hero trophy Ceremony I made my way over to the XR8 Ute that had been slowly moving closer to the burnout patch and prepared myself. It really didn’t want to muck it up it, not only was their the crowd to impress, I had five of my employees telling me what I had to do, and not do, to the point where they were drawing me maps in the dust on the windscreen, they also made it clear if I muffed it I would never here the end of it…

I lined up at the start and the marshal gave me the wind up and I mashed the throttle pulled through the gears to top until all I could see was smoke peeling of the rear tyres. I started to move forward along the entrance to the pad I gave it a flick and looped a couple of times just as the smoke got so heavy I couldn’t see anything, I knew the barrier wasn’t too far away and so I sat there until the smoke cleared to see the barrier about a meter from my front passenger guard I kept into until I heard the left hand tyre let go and then the outer casing of the right tyre came off and blew the body kit of the back of the car, not to mention destroyed the rear quarter panel. I stopped and let the smoke clear only to find the shifter cable had melted, I jumped out into the back of the tray and gave the crowd the big fist in the air, just as I had been instructed by my crew and although the car was a little worse for wear, you know what? I now get the whole Summernats burnout thing and it felt good!

That one was for you Lyle RIP!

By Rob Vickery