It has been a mad 24 hours in the Haltech Horsepower Heroes, with the overall horsepower record smashed twice by two HQ Holdens with Dandy Engines twin turbo, big block Chevy combos.

In qualifying today, Daniel’s Monaro threw out three runs, the first a 3449hp, 3541hp and then the final belter of 3682hp. It eclipses the record set by fellow Dandy Engines customer Darren Portelli, whose HQ sedan thumped out 3513hp yesterday to initially hold the record.

We spoke to Frank Marchese from Dandy Engines about the epic run, who was on hand with the laptop during pulls.

“You’re always looking for a result, there’s a lot of anticipation – you know what should work, but sometimes things don’t work.”

“You’ve got a massive crowd, as a tuner and engine builder I have a lot of that on my shoulders, and what makes it worse is I have two customers here fighting for one spot, so you need give everyone an equal chance.”

The boys took their time between each of the three mandatory qualifying runs, shutting the car down, pulling spark plugs and taking due care to get the most out of the package to create some proper Summernats history.

Both Daniel’s Monaro and Darren Portelli’s sedan will have to return on Sunday to duke it out in the final, but as Frank pointed out, the 3000hp Mainline hub dyno might be at its limit copping this much abuse.

“We experienced something Adam [Rogash] is going to look at, but the engine just got grabbed, so we don’t know if the dyno has just grabbed the engine and stopped it,” he says. “So, we might have reached a point where we’re out of dyno.”

“I’ve still got some nitrous up my sleeve that I’ve always wanted to do infront of a massive crowd,” says Frank.

There’s still a whole day of qualifying left to go tomorrow before Sunday’s finals, so stay tuned for any more action via our socials and website.