No Tinkering Is Needed When Bernstein Reaches . . . : 314 Miles Per Hour

For 50 years, Kenny Bernstein has gone through life the same way he drives his race car--at 300 m.p.h.

It would be inaccurate to say that the drag racer-business executive-team owner from Mission Viejo is slowing down, but he is cutting back.

Instead of juggling top-fuel dragster, Indy car and Winston Cup stock car teams--racing from one race track to another nearly every weekend--he has dropped the Indy car program to concentrate on winning his first National Hot Rod Assn. top-fuel championship and developing World of Outlaws sprint car legend Steve Kinser into a stock car winner.

Even his approach is different this year.

It has been almost a tradition in drag racing that Bernstein and his crew chief, Dale Armstrong, would start each year with some innovative technology thought up by Armstrong that would make the car’s performance in the season’s first event something of a question mark.

This year, the car has not been touched.

That’s because Bernstein ran an astonishing 314.46 m.p.h. from a standing start in a quarter-mile last October at Pomona, perhaps the biggest leap in drag racing’s continuous search for speed--and he didn’t want Armstrong tinkering with the record-breaking machine.

“I told Dale that if he changed so much as one thing, I’d kill him,” Bernstein said. “I told him to put the car over in the corner of the shop (in Lake Forest) and let it sit. You know, Dale can’t stop making changes, but I told him to make his changes on next year’s car, not this one.

“Dale’s the kind of guy who tries to reinvent the wheel at times. Sometimes he gets lost. But real thinkers are like that. Even when they’re not winning, you know they’ll eventually overcome. Being innovative can be a hindrance to consistency, but when things are right, it all pays off.”

Armstrong was the first crew chief to use wind-tunnel tests to refine the aerodynamic design of a funny car, the first to use two separate fuel systems, and the first to design a two-stage, lock-up clutch.

He is working on another clutch advancement--but not on the car that ran 314.

The crew took the proven car to Bakersfield last weekend for a two-day test for this week’s 35th annual Chief Auto Parts Winternationals, which will start Thursday at the Pomona Raceway.

When Bernstein ran 306.95 m.p.h. almost effortlessly on Saturday, the crew packed it up and hauled it home to wait for Pomona.

“We’re ready,” Bernstein said. “It’s a unique situation we’re in. We’re going back to the same race track with the same car that set the record and there’s no need to do anything more. I can’t wait for that first (qualifying) run Thursday.”

They ought to be ready. The 314 makes their top fueler 5.51 m.p.h. faster than the second-fastest, driven by Winston series champion Scott Kalitta, and nearly 8 m.p.h. faster than the next one.

When Bernstein increased the record from Kalitta’s month-old 308.95 in the final round of the Winston Select Finals in the twilight of last Oct. 30 at Pomona, it was as shocking to him as to the rest of the drag racing community.

“We ran 311 earlier in the day (in the semifinal round) and that wasn’t too surprising because we’d been looking for a 310 run, but we thought that was the limit. Then all of a sudden, two hours later I go down the track with all eight cylinders hitting the whole 1,320 feet and that 314 popped up on the scoreboard.

“To tell you the truth, we don’t know where it came from. It was late in the day, in the evening actually, and it was cool and conditions had to be absolutely perfect.”

Bernstein was already in drag racing’s record book as the first to have exceeded 300 m.p.h., the ultimate target of top fuelers since Don Garlits broke the 200-m.p.h. barrier in 1964. Bernstein did it March 20, 1992, at Gainesville, Fla., when he hit 301.70.

“Getting that 300 was the biggest thrill I’ve ever had on a race track,” Bernstein said. “The 314 will be bettered some day, maybe this year, maybe by us, but no one else can ever be the first to go 300. It’s something people will always remember.

“It’s funny, we didn’t expect that one either. The fastest we’d run was 296 and there were several other drivers who looked like they had better chances to get to 300 first.”

Mike Dunn, Pat Austin, Joe Amato, Don Prudhomme and Ed McCulloch were all in the hunt, nibbling away at 300 before Bernstein did it during Friday qualifying for the Gatornationals.

“At the end of the run, I saw some guys holding up three fingers,” Bernstein recalled. “I thought they meant I had moved up to third on the qualifying ladder.”

Armstrong, watching from the starting line, was equally surprised. When Al Segrini, who was in the other lane, smoked his tires and partially obscured the finish line with dust and smoke, Armstrong turned and started walking back to the team van.

“I’d only gone a step or two before I heard this big roar and I wondered what had happened,” Armstrong told the National Dragster. “Then it hit me that this might have been 300. I was scared to turn around and look at the scoreboard. But I turned around and there it was: 301.”

*

What does it feel like to run 314, compared to 301?

“You really can’t tell the difference,” Bernstein said. “You don’t realize how fast you’re going. You know you’re going fast, that’s for sure, but when everything’s running perfect--like it has to be for a 300 run--it’s almost like it’s happening in slow motion.

“You feel the G forces when you hit the accelerator and you can feel it when the car pulls hard for the full quarter-mile, but as for telling the difference between 300 and 314, it’s all relative.”

When a 300-m.p.h. top-fuel car comes off the starting line, it accelerates from 0 to 100 in about nine-tenths of a second with a force nearly five times that of gravity--the same force as that of a space shuttle when it leaves the launching pad at Cape Canaveral.

“It feels safer today at those speeds, though, than it did when I was a youngster back in Dallas, going only 180 or 190,” Bernstein said.

What does it take to run 300?

“In order to go 300,” Armstrong explained, “you have to be able to put a high volume of fuel to the motor, and when you do that, it’s hard to light it and burn it all. We developed a new type of cylinder head and some strong magnetos, which kept the cylinders lit and burned more fuel. On that (first 301) run, we were on seven cylinders at the finish line.”

On the 314 run, all eight cylinders were lighted all the way through the timing lights.

*

The 314 car has appeared in only seven events since making its debut last August in the Northwest Nationals in Seattle.

Built by veteran chassis designer Al Swindahl, the car was quite different from previous models. Instead of being 285 inches long, it was stretched out to 300 and the engine location was changed.

“Having a longer car makes it more flexible,” Bernstein said. “It helps transfer the weight to the rear, to get it over the rear wheels where it pushes down to gain more traction. In the shorter car, we were having trouble with weight transfer.”

Bernstein and Armstrong had been in the longest victory drought of their 15 years together before running 314 to beat Cory McClenathan in the quickest side-by-side top-fuel race in NHRA history. Bernstein’s winning elapsed time was 4.720 seconds to 4.798 for Cory Mac.

They had gone 28 events without winning a final round, a frustrating situation for a driver who had won 41 national events and four Winston championships. All the championships, however, were in funny cars.

Since Bernstein switched to the more competitive top-fuel class in 1990, he has finished second in 1991 and third in 1992 and 1993. Last year, with only the one win at Pomona, he slid to sixth.

“It doesn’t matter how fast you are if you’re not consistent,” Bernstein said.

Statistics bear that out. Although he has had trouble winning, he has broken 300 m.p.h. on 27 occasions, three more than anyone else.

“Consistency is what we’re aiming at this year,” Bernstein said. “We want to win and be the first to win both NHRA funny car and top-fuel championships. We can’t do it smoking the tires. We’ve got to get down the track, run after run, without screwing something up. We make some strong passes and then smoke the tires and we’re out.”

Smoking the tires occurs when too much nitro--called “tipping the can”--is added to the fuel or the clutch settings are off and the car overpowers the track at the start. Instead of hooking up and streaking down the strip, the wheels spin, smoke fills the air and usually the race is lost.

“Once the fuel is in and the settings made, there’s nothing the driver can do,” Bernstein said. “All I do is mash on the accelerator and don’t let it up unless the wheels spin. The settings are all done by Armstrong, based on computer readings from previous runs, both that day and from other tracks under similar atmospheric conditions. Every run we make is documented so there is no guesswork involved.

“The faster we go, the closer we push the envelope to the edge. We plan our runs against the track, not against the guy in the next lane. But you’ve got to remember that he’s doing the same thing so you’ve got to worry about his capabilities. It’s what makes drag racing so exciting. You never know what’s going to happen. There’s always a surprise coming.”

Sometimes it’s a 300 m.p.h. run . . . and sometimes it’s the tires going up in smoke.