P
AUL Drew owns Garden City Auto
Wreckers in the Geelong suburb
of Norlane. His family has owned
and run Avalon Raceway since
1976, so Paul pretty much grew up at the
speedway track, and for the past 10 years he
has raced wingless open-wheel sprintcars
throughout Victoria.
He’s also into burnouts. Along with Aaron
Mackley, he is one of the founders/promoters
of Tread Cemetery and the Sunday skid
comp #keepitoffthestreets held at Avalon
Raceway. #keepitoffthestreets is more an
informal Sunday get-together than a burnout
comp. Open to anybody, the idea is to give
young people an off-street venue to smash a
few tyres, rather than on public roads.Being a wrecker, you must have some
cool old steel.
I sold most of my old steel cars! The last one
was an HT wagon, which went last year. I
do have a couple of Humber Super Snipes
[laughs]. One is going to receive a turbo
Barra motor and the other project will be
a gasser, which we’ll use to go racing with
Damien Kemp.
You have a cool burnout car!
I found the Land Cruiser through work down in
Anglesea. It’s a 1971 HJ45 Cruiser sitting on aHQ One Tonner chassis and powered by
a six-litre LS2 with tunnel ram, Powerglide
and Dominator converter.
Does having a family who owns a
speedway track makes the process
of running a comp easier?
In the end, Aaron and I hire the venue.
For the comps, we organise all our staff,
our own insurance and the medics –
they are 100 per cent us. The family
has been good for advice; I can go to
my uncles and ask how do you do this or is
there a specific way to do that. They’re always
willing to chip in and help. They have so much
experience from running the speedway.
What do they think of burnouts?
The family are more into speedway. Last week
I had an issue with my burnout car, so my
cousin and I went out to the speedway to give
it a bit of a test run. He isn’t into burnouts, but
after driving my car he could appreciate why
the guys are into it. He was impressed with
how much power it has. His mindset was back
in the old days where you just took out your
Commodore or Falcon and just gave it a go.
These new cars have easily over 500hp.
What is the future for Tread Cemetery
and #keepitoffthestreets?
Where we are now with #keepitoffthestreets
is perfect – nice casual Sundays whereeveryone hangs out. You have
the opportunity to get off six or seven sets of
tyres; eight sets in a Sunday session is the
best so far. Tread Cemetery last year was our
best to date. We had 100 cars for the last
comp in Sydney; it doesn’t get much better
than that. The next level is a Powercruise or
Summernats-level event. We also go to other
events to see how they are run, and from there
we can make our events better. Each pad is
different. It’s not just ‘turn up, put your foot
down and go’. There’s a lot of skill to getting
the car onto the pad and driving.
What do you like about both speedway
and burnouts?
Sprintcars are a high-speed pure adrenaline
rush. There is a similar rush during a burnout- full noise, top gear and wide open.
It’s fantastic. s
PEOPLE LIKE US
STORY & PHOTOS SIMON DAVIDSONPAUL DREW
GEELONG, VICTORIA
My cousin and I went to
the speedway to give the
Cruiser a test run. He isn’t
into burnouts, but after
driving my car he was
impressed by the power
oorr isis eveveveeryone hangsout. Youhave