Rockynats 5 Pro Burnout Series results

By: Street Machine Magazine

The Pro Burnout and Open classes at Rare Spares Rockynats went gangbusters, with around $30K in cash on the line across both classes, and 20 cars throwing down in Sunday afternoon’s Pro-class final.

Torrential rain leading into the event had us all guessing if any rubber would be blazed at all next to Rockhampton’s Fitzroy River, and after Friday evening’s first qualifying run was postponed due to a soaked pad, things weren’t looking good.

Thankfully, that was the last of the heavy rain for the weekend, and come Saturday, the burnouts proceeded as planned. Friday’s suspended qualifiers meant those in the Pro class had to hang it all out on Saturday, alongside the Open-class combatants.

Rockynats #5 Pro Burnout Field 2025

Sunday saw the Open-class finals, as well as redemption rounds for entrants who’d missed out on finals spots in either Open or Pro. Finally, the headlining act, the Pro Burnout finals, saw the top 20 Pro tyre-shredders take to the pad to close out a mega weekend of skids.

Russell Harris in the bright pink LOO5E VL took home the top gong in the Pro class, after laying down enough smoke to disappear instantly and using every inch of the pad. He’d come all the way up from Ararat, Victoria to take on the finals, and he made sure the long journey was well worth the effort.

Second in Pro went to Warren Gersekowski in the 1TUFHG ute. Warren threw down a ripper qualifying run on Saturday and backed that up in a big way in Sunday’s finals. Ryan Lofts took third place in Pro in the OR WHAT VX Calais, and all three place-getters scored spots in the Pro Burnout qualifiers at Street Machine Summernats 38.

The hot and humid afternoon wasn’t without incident. Darren Triffett’s INJECTED VH Commodore suffered a big rear-end fire, and although the awesome firies put it out quick-smart, another smaller blaze took hold as Darren finished off, leaving a trailing of flaming rubber in his wake.

Hayden Kirkwood’s screaming 13B turbo Mazda Cosmo was the only rotary in the Pro finals, backing up a solid showing at Summernats 37 in January. Unfortunately, the Kiwi did have to hit reverse at the end of his run in the entry chute before finishing off his tyres.

A big highlight was young gun Jacob Lenoble in the SYCO PTH Datsun 120Y. He started off his run with a ferocious tip-in, only for the little Datto to cut out shortly afterwards. He got it fired up again and reversed back to essentially restart his run, but the engine coughed and died as soon as he plucked a gear.

However, after Warren Gersekowski had done what we thought was the final run of the afternoon, Jacob re-appeared for his own redemption run and sent off a set of tyres the way he’d wanted to the first time!