Minutes after the attempt yesterday Chris Sheedy from Guinness World Records told the 10,000-plus crowd at Canberra's EPIC showgrounds that exactly 69 cars had managed to complete the 30-second burnout required.

"It's particularly an Australian kind of record," Mr Sheedy added.

"If someone broke it elsewhere in the world, I think Australians would be offended."

His greatest concern about the record had been that the cars were placed so close together.

"When cars are burning out, we know that they do tend to slide sideways," he said.

"But they did an incredible job and not even one of them slid."

It was one of those events that was "incredibly hard" to organise, which deterred people from breaking the record, he said.

The burnout blanketed the entire area with smoke, caused by the complete shredding of tyres that cost about $500 to $600 each. After the event firefighters had to put out one or two small rubber fires.

Summernats co-owner Andy Lopez said the attempt had taken months to organise and more than 200 staff were involved in pulling the event together on the day.

"We had to do 50 cars at least to break the world record, and in typical Summernats fashion we smashed it with 69," he said.

"I heard about 30 tyres blow during it - it's a bit of a rubber bath out here." AAP