Bernstein Runs Out of Luck in Final

For most of two days, it appeared that Kenny Bernstein should buy a bushel of lottery tickets and head for Las Vegas. He had more luck in two days on the Pomona Fairplex drag strip than most racers have in a lifetime.

Then he came up against young Pat Austin, drag racing’s newest star from Tacoma, Wash., in the final round of the 27th annual Winston Finals, and the Bernstein luck ran out. Austin, with a solid run of 5.01 seconds, defeated the veteran from Newport Beach, who ran 5.10.

“The way Kenny’s luck was running, he was on such a roll that I was afraid I’d red-light and give it to him,” Austin said with a smile. It was only the fifth top-fuel event Austin had raced after taking over the Castrol dragster from the late Gary Ormsby. It was Austin’s second victory.

Joe Amato, by defeating Jimmy Nix in the first round, clinched his fourth world top-fuel championship, but he failed in an attempt to retain his Winston Finals title when his dragster would not start in the second round.

In other professional finals, Al Hoffman of Umatilla, Fla., defeated Ed McCulloch of Hemet in funny cars; Darrell Alderman of Lexington, Ky., who had clinched the pro stock championship last month, defeated Jerry Eckman, who recently moved from Ventura to Newark, Ohio, in pro stock; and John Myers of Birmingham, Ala., in pro stock bike won over James Bernard of McHenry, Md. after David Schultz of Fort Myers, Fla., won the series championship by reaching the semifinal round.

Until the finals, it appeared to be Bernstein’s day as 46,000 spectators sat in on a remarkable series of events.

After defeating Eddie Hill in the first round, Bernstein was handed two solo runs when Lori Johns and Cory McClenathan failed to make the starting line against him. That put the former funny car champion into the finals.

Johns could not get her dragster in gear after doing a pre-race burnout, and McClenathan’s car crashed and burned while making a solo run, leaving Bernstein without a semifinal opponent.

And the day before, Bernstein was practically handed $50,000 for winning the Budweiser Top Fuel Classic when Amato’s car broke while well ahead of Bernstein in the semifinals, Don Prudhomme smoked his tires in the final and Bernstein won with a relatively slow time.

“I’m just glad we won it (the championship) before bad things began to happen,” Amato said. “Winning our fourth one puts us in a special class.”

Amato is the first top-fuel driver to win four championships. He will collect $150,000 for his 1991 victory at the National Hot Rod Assn. victory banquet tonight in Ontario.

Amato’s problem was a fuel line that seized, preventing the nitromethane from reaching the engine--a disastrous situation when a top fueler uses 12 gallons in less than six seconds.

“Losing two days in a row like that is tough, but losing is as much a part of racing as winning,” Amato said.

Saturday, in the Budweiser Top Fuel Classic, which he had won four times in a row, Amato’s valve train broke, exploding his engine.

When Tim Richards and the Valvoline crew pushed Amato’s dragster off the starting line Sunday, it meant a solo run for McClenathan, a rookie top-fuel driver from Anaheim. About 50 yards off the line, however, the ignition system broke and the throttle stuck.

“I grabbed the brakes and smoked them until they burned out, and about half-track I pulled the chute but I couldn’t stop the car.” McClenathan said. “After I crossed the finish line--they said I was going 84 (m.p.h.) there--I picked up speed. I knew I was in serious trouble. For a minute I thought I might go right on across the street and end up on the 18th green (of the Mountain Meadows golf course).

“I headed for the sand pit, but even that didn’t stop me. I ran right through the safety net into some steel poles. Right then I just closed my eyes and held on. When I hit the poles, it tore the entire front end off the car, right down to where my feet are.”

The virtually new dragster, with less than 30 runs on it, is a $70,000 loss, and there isn’t any insurance on top-fuel dragsters.

In the other half of the elimination ladder, there were two classic age vs. youth second-round matchups. Austin, 26, defeated Prudhomme, 50, the No. 1 qualifier, and Tom McEwen, 54, defeated Cruz Pedregon, 27. Then Austin eliminated McEwen, who drives for Boston Red Sox slugger Jack Clark, in a side-by-side duel.

Austin’s remarkable reaction time of 0.420 seconds got him off ahead of McEwen (0.471), and Austin held off the veteran from Fountain Valley with a 5.080-second run to McEwen’s 5.082 at 284.45 m.p.h.

“It was quite a thrill for me to beat two legends from my youth (Prudhomme and McEwen),” Austin said. “I raced the Snake (Prudhomme) for the first time three weeks ago. He intimidated us and we beat ourselves, but we were ready today.”

Austin lost his chance to score a daily double, as he did in September in Topeka, Kan., where he won top-fuel and alcohol funny-car titles on the same day, when his experimental Oldsmobile engine failed him in the alcohol eliminations.

“Waiting last week was a nervous time,” Austin said of the week’s postponement because of rain. “My fiancee had the week off, so we went on a vacation to Santa Barbara. I couldn’t stand it. All I thought about was working on the car and winning this race. I couldn’t relax for a minute.

“Now we can go back home and enjoy the holidays, then get ready to come back here for the first race next season. I can’t wait.”