🏅Blackberry Rocket - Mark Benston Jr's World Record Holding Camaro | Haltech Heroes

I'm Mark Benston Jr. and I am the radial tire world record holder and I am today's Haltech hero. I grew up as in a family my dad was building racing engines so I was a little little boy you know five six seven years old running around in the yard racing go-karts where my dad kind of started racing and he got into doing engines and building stuff on his own. I just pretty much grew up around that my whole life got into racing junior dragsters and did that on and off all the way up till I was 18 years old and from there I did a little bracket racing in one of his Osmobiles that he had when I was about 19 20 and I've always been around the heads up racing with Dale and Buck. Dad always built motors and tuned the cars for them and it was like a dream for me to be able to work on cars like that. A time come where Buck was ready to quit driving and he said we're either selling out or you're driving. I've had enough so I was like I guess I need to you know if I'm gonna proceed with this and go ahead and step up. Hadn't been but 9.60s in the quarter mile up until that point and I jumped in that car and the third pass I made in it went 4.30s. So everything just pretty much escalated from there I ran that car for two three probably three or four years he finally ended up selling it and the Blackberry Rocket was always sitting in the garage because Dale I mean Dale had the Raspberry Rocket which we raced here for many many years and he crashed it and then he replaced it with the Blackberry Rocket and it's been sitting in the garage for probably three years. So once the other car got sold I was in the middle of a points championship 2021 so we started thrashing to throw the car together because I won the first two races at a points championship so we got it together for the one big race at Yellow Bullet. We finished off the season in the Blackberry Rocket and we won the championship with it and everything's just pretty much evolved from there with that car. The engine has been around since 2004. Ironically it got sold in the show mod and went to Alabama they stripped the car to pieces. We ran the 481X in the Blackberry Rocket for a while we realized it wasn't going to cut it and we needed the old clunker back. We traded some parts and we ended up with it back and here it is in the Blackberry Rocket winning races and setting records. So last year and I think when we came to the race the record was a 5.76. We struggled all through qualifying. We had five qualifiers and the first four of them we were sitting on the outside looking in. Q5 we got our stuff together and we went 5.75 set the record. I think we qualified number two or three last year. I think round one we went up 5.81 won the first round which obviously wasn't a record but from there on second, third, fourth round we reset the record every run 5.73 5.71 5.69 all the way to win the event it's truly something to remember 5.69 to 2.54 fastest radial tire car fastest domestic car to participate ever in the World Cup Finals. Dad I think he's been racing since 1990. He's still gosh he's got a 57 Chevy that he bought when he was 11 years old. He still got it that's just always been a passion of his. He always had street cars that he would rip up and down the road back and forth and his dad tell him he's gonna tear it up and blow it up and he would take it home fix it and be back headed to work the next day in it. I guess I'm a lot like that also probably a little worse than him when it comes to racing side of things I don't like to quit I don't like to live for nothing you know always always striving to do better. So Dale I think it was 2016 no 2017 I met Dale at this event we had switched to Haltech in 2016 and 2017 World Cup Finals was our first event here participating with Haltech fuel injection system under the hood. Dale come over you know introduced himself to me and I you know got to learn more about him and he went home and me and him have just been back and forth ever since chatting and we just become like brothers and so yeah Dale and I have been very good friends for a long time. Anytime I've always had issues or I weren't smart enough to know what I was doing how to set something up in the Haltech you know I could always rely on him to help fix it get me through you know what I had going on to the point now that he's flying over here on a regular basis and we get to race together a lot it's been a lot of fun and a very new experience for us and a lot of my crew guys and they enjoy having all the Australians over several times a year now. Currently have a Nexus R5 system in there you know all the sensors shock sensors you know all the pressure sensors ride height sensors anything you can think of I have it on the car. Dale is one of the ones that did the harness for the car I got all the rotary knobs everything that you can you know just to tune up on the fly and we do it at just about every run you know my dad come over to radio say yep tracks good you know you leave the tune up alone or we can turn it up all that stuff that makes you know life a lot easier you don't have to always you know get a laptop out and make adjustments you can just do it when you need it. I mean everything our car has been flawless all the employees everybody that works for Haltech has always been great to me and couldn't do it without them. Yeah so we got what we like to call a 588X big block Chevy under the hood it's a cast block cast head the basis of the engine was you know built 20 years ago obviously it doesn't have 20 year old parts inside of it except for maybe some intake valves still. We run a Plasma Man intake also something else built in Australia injectors from Plasma Man we got a Liberty transmission with a four-speed quick drive converter drive in the car you know everything's all controlled by Haltech shifter you know all of our dump valves our lockups we have a lot of neat trick stuff that goes on in the car and kind of like to talk about but some things I can't always give away. You know last year winning the race was one thing I really wanted to be the first car to go to 560s on a radial tire after the semi I didn't think that was quite possible we went to 571 and the car was kind of like I could feel it spinning it was a little bit all over the place so we made the wise decision to kind of back it down for the finals it was getting cold it was in the 40s and that's not normally a good thing to run on a radial tire so we backed the car down slowed everything down a little bit and obviously it ended up liking it because it went 569 to 254 in the finals and so it's kind of a surreal feeling to get you know a victory and set the record that I wanted to do. The World Cup is you know nothing like any other trophy out there it's about 32 pounds or something I think I weighed it I realized how heavy it was when my guys dumped about six beers in it and they tried to make me chug it and I couldn't pick it up far enough to even get a sip out of it so yeah it was a great feeling everything went flawless after Q5 on I mean we made five consecutive runs A to B do what we had to do even started the car up and drove it back yeah nobody's beat it this year and there's no car left that can so this year we had a rough well I can't say we had a rough go we come off the trailer number one qualifier 577 lifting at the thousand foot everything you know picked up where we left off last year which was almost too good to be true yesterday morning our final qualifier somewhere around 800 foot we lost a piston put a big hole in it shot wool everywhere was on a really good run we were probably getting ready to reset our own record on that pass tore the motor all apart and it was just not safe to fix to try to carry on for the rest of the event so it's better off to go ahead and load the car up in one piece put her tail between the legs and go home yeah we'll be back next year probably with the same old pile of junk to see if we can reset the record and win the race again hopefully next year we can have an extra bullet sitting in the trailer so we don't have to be sitting here talking while everybody else is racing but we'll see how the offseason we've been testing trying to get the car sorted out so come next year we're looking to enter in the RVW field and see what we can do and I'll still keep running the black car and pro 275 and you know running this event also so my crew so it's always sometimes the skeleton crew a lot of these bigger events I get plenty of help sometimes more than you need Dale Collins Jr. is the one that owns the car ever since the old car got sold he pretty much like turned this thing over to me like it's my own never questioned anything we've always got to do anything we needed to Tommy he's always been like my right-hand man always there when I need him and now his soon-to-be son-in-law is you know picking up on things being a really big help for us my father he we have a love-hate relationship because he's more of a conservative person and I'm more like I want to hit a home run every time I can so a lot of times we end up like meeting in the middle on our tune-up you know so we don't try to totally destroy things but I like to go fast and win races so most time we meet somewhere in the middle well the last couple years when I'm not racing I have go-karts still that I race on on the dirt just something fun to get away I enjoy doing with a lot of my other friends that I race with I used to race with and now that's all they do otherwise I have a year and a half year old daughter that now takes up a lot of my time and I'm sure ready for me to be at home but not a whole lot otherwise tuned race cars you know for customers pretty much life revolves around racing.