Kenny Bernstein
Kenny Bernstein started his fuel racing career in Texas and the southwest, first driving a number of front-motored Top Fuel dragsters for other teams, including those owned by the Anderson brothers, Vance Hunt, the Carroll brothers, and Prentiss Cunningham. As an enthusiast and a businessman, Kenny soon realized that in order to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish, he needed to put together his own team, which he did, and set out a journey that led him to become one of drag racing’s true legends.
Besides being well know for his performance on the track, Bernstein is admired for his business savvy. In the early days of his career, Kenny owned several restaurants and was working at overseeing them full time and at the same time trying to compete on the track with a pretty full schedule that included not only competing at the National Events but some match racing as well. It didn’t take Bernstein very long to decide he couldn’t achieve the goals he had in mind for his racing career if he continued with both ventures, so he sold the restaurants and concentrated on racing.
Since taking this initial step, he has successfully achieved his goal becoming one of the top racers in the world, accruing six NHRA world championships, four in Funny Car and two in Top Fuel, along with 69 national event victories. Most fans recognize Bernstein as the first NHRA driver to surpass the 300 miles-per-hour barrier, a feat he accomplished March 20, 1992, in Gainesville, Fla.
As a businessman, he is also known for his ability to provide his sponsors with the ongoing exposure they are looking for. Testimony to this is the fact that his contract with Budweiser, signed through 2009, will make the Bernstein/Budweiser 30-year sponsorship partnership the longest consecutive major team sponsorship in auto-sports history.
In the mid 1980s, Bernstein began to expand his motor sports portfolio. At one point he simultaneously preside over a NASCAR Winston Cup team, a sports marketing company, and an Indy Car team, and he partnered in King Racing Components, which marketed RacPak computers. He became the first and only team owner to field cars and win races in America’s three largest motor sports series: NASCAR, NHRA and Indy Car. After years of crisscrossing the continent and traveling to races of every kind both here and overseas, Bernstein decided to scale back. In the mid 1990s, he sold his NASCAR and Indy Car teams to concentrate his first love, NHRA drag racing.
There’s hardly a major NHRA award he hasn’t won, and most he’s won in multiples. He was named one of the top 10 drivers in NHRA’s 50-year history, and was one of 12 nominees for the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcaster Association for the Newsmaker of the Half-Century award. Other nominees included Mario Andretti, Dale Earnhardt, A.J. Foyt, Roger Penske, the France family, the Hulman-George family, John Force, Wally Parks, Jeff Gordan, Dan Gurney, and Richard Petty.
Bernstein retired at the end of the 2002 season, but climbed back into the cockpit of the Budweiser/Lucas Oil dragster when his son, Brandon, suffered season-ending back injuries in a first round accident in Englishtown, N.J. In 2003. Kenny won four of the last five races that season. After Brandon was healed enough to resume driving the dragster, Kenny again went into retirement. However, acknowledging that he was never comfortable at the racetrack outside the cockpit, Bernstein jumped at a Funny Car sponsorship opportunity that arose in the summer of 2006 with Monster Energy drinks. Bernstein surprised the motor sports community by announcing he would return in 2007 to campaign a Monster Energy/Lucas Oil Dodge Charge by Mopar. With his background, the new sponsor and his drive to win, he hopes to continue to add to his trophy collection and awards for years to come.