![\"Summernats](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2026-01-08-Summernats-launch-7-1200x675.jpg\")
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Summernats 38 has begun with the Oz Wheels City Cruise. Photo: Region.<\/p>\n
Summernats 38 is here and that means 3000 vehicle entrants and 130,000 people are expected to flood into Exhibition Park for the epic motoring festival.<\/p>\n
Festival co-owner Andy Lopez said everyone was ready to check out the \u201cbeautiful, wild, colourful, noisy\u201d cars on display and to take part in all the events Summernats had to offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s burnouts, cruising, elite show cars, drifting, Skid Row, thousands of people having a great time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a festival, it\u2019s a party and our job \u2013 our joy \u2013 comes from getting people into venues safely, giving them a break \u2026 and sending them home happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Summernats delivers a huge economic injection into the ACT for hospitality businesses, hotels, retail and more.<\/p>\n
About 80 per cent of festival-goers hail from outside of the Territory and already they\u2019ve arrived in droves.<\/p>\n
The festival is always known for being hot and Mr Lopez said organisers had taken the heatwave conditions into account with extra shade structures, pallets of free water, tonnes of free sunscreen, several medical and first aid teams on site and about 50,000 Zooper Doopers ready to be handed out.<\/p>\n
Three new pedestrian overpasses have also been erected to help people move more freely throughout the festival.<\/p>\n
Overall Mr Lopez hoped car lovers and the car curious alike would find something they enjoyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe variety and types of cars that come to this event are off the charts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you love cars, you can see the car that you love and thousands of other cars that you might not even know that you loved.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mr Lopez acknowledged that, as with each year, the small cohort of festival-goers who decide not to follow the ACT\u2019s road rules had already started making themselves known and plans had been made to manage their behaviour.<\/p>\n
ACT Government vehicle inspectors will be at the entrance of EPIC and extra random drug testing and random breath testing sites will be set up.<\/p>\n
Officer-In-Charge of Road Policing, ACT Policing Detective Inspector Mark Steel, reminded everyone that extra officers and patrols would be present at EPIC, Braddon and across the Territory for the duration of the festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already seized four vehicles in the lead-up [to the event]: we seized five in total last year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s disappointing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave an enjoyable event but just know that antisocial behaviour and dangerous driving will result in police action.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a message echoed by Det Insp Steel\u2019s cross-border counterpart.<\/p>\n
NSW Police Traffic and Highway Inspector Will Collins reminded people that several officers were special constables, which meant they could carry out operations on either side of the border.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe border doesn\u2019t really present a significant barrier to our policing operations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Extra NSW Police forces have been deployed on arterial roads leading to Canberra with increased traffic expected into the weekend.<\/p>\n
Inspector Collins said no-one travelling to the event had been charged thus far, but officers wouldn\u2019t hesitate if the community was being put at risk on the roads.<\/p>\n
\u201cContrary to popular belief, we\u2019re not here to target motoring enthusiasts, we\u2019re focused on a small group of people that routinely do the wrong thing and put the rest of the community at risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you plan to come down here and engage in street racing, burnouts, drug or drink driving, or other high-risk driving behaviour \u2026 make sure you pick up a train timetable on the way down, because you don\u2019t be driving home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summernats 38 has begun with the Oz Wheels City Cruise. Photo: Region. Summernats 38 is here and that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":502577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-502576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115862423738793064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}