Despite the brakes on early for walk-up spectators, Summernats enjoyed a record one-day crowd of 46,000 people on Saturday, filled with magnificent mullets, bountiful burnouts, and acres of well-polished metal gleaming in the sun.
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Summernats co-owner Andy Lopez was well-pleased with the four-day event's progress and attributed much of the seamless operation so far to months of pre-planning and organisation.
"We could have even more people through the gates, there's no doubt about it," he said.
"But the more people you bring in and the more crowded it gets, there's inevitably a knock-on effect on the visitor experience.
"Summernats is a really dynamic environment; we've got people moving around the venue all the time. If we put more people into this environment, it becomes uncomfortable for people to easily move around. We don't want that."
Mullets, masterful burnouts, spectacular freestyle motocross, and cars of every size, style and variety, from the classics to the super-modified, kept the massive crowd moving.
Gone are the days of running the potentially volatile Summernats security arrangements on the fly.
After the embarrassing Saturday night fiasco of last year's event when drunken patrons flooded over the concrete barriers and onto the cruise strip, turning it into a burnout pad and bullying security staff out, it was clear the internal policing arrangements had to change.
And change they have.
Dozens of security cameras sprang up ahead of this year's event, scanning all entry and exit points, skid row, the burnout pad and many other critical areas including the Central Park corner at Flemington Road, where the worst of last year's behaviour occurred.
All that CCTV vision now feeds directly into the newly created event control centre. It's a level of overwatch sophistication that Summernats has never had before.
Craig Sheridan's Sydney-based security management company, which has oversight of some of the biggest events in the country including the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the Vivid Festival and the Deni Ute Muster, runs the centre with former NSW police officer Brett Lloyd as the co-ordinator.
"We have been planning for this since March last year," Mr Lloyd said.
"This level of coverage, command and control is quite common now with major events, which is what Summernats has become."
Unlike many other major events where thousands of people gather and there's the potential for risk-taking behaviour and alcohol-fuelled violence, Canberra's annual street car festival has the added complexity of cars and people in close proximity.
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Restricting speeds, keeping people back from the cars, behind the barriers, and out of harm's way is a fundamental rule and was rigorously applied this year.
Summernats runs its own internal security teams but any offensive behaviour outside the venue falls to the intervention of ACT police.
Last year when event security was over-run, police intervened and forklifts lifted concrete barriers across the internal cruise strip. Police are again on standby, just in case.
Full strength beer sales were delayed and the change in Saturday's program schedule this year switched the huge attraction of the Burnout Masters competition to 5pm, sending the crowds out of the potentially volatile Flemington Road cruise route corner and up to the burnout pad, where there was room for well over 10,000 spectators.
