A burnout (a peel out or power brake) happen when you keep your car stationary and try to spin its wheels. Because of the friction tires heat up and produce smoke, which is quite an impressive sight. Sometimes tire are not able to get over the spinning race and blow up. Here’s the first clip that will give you the idea.

At first burnouts were a must at the drag racing: if the drag racing tires had high temperature it enhanced the performance of the car. So right before the start of the race participants did burnouts in order to raise the temperature. It probably looked so cool that very soon burnout itself became a form of competition that attracted many spectators that act as the judges of the competition that pay attention to the style and quality of burnouts and point out the best one. Australia is the most famous country were burnout competitions are held, they also take place in North America. Burnouts are also an indispensable part of informal street racing.

Nevertheless burnouts in public places are illegal in many countries, though the punishments differ from paying a fine up to confiscating the car for a period of time. It happens very often that parents get their cars confiscated because their children were caught while doing burnouts. They get fined up to $500 and also have to pay a storage fee around $15-20 a day.

But burnouts also have another happy aspect: sometimes winners of NASCAR races perform outstanding burnouts to mark their victory.