Mark Benston Jr. doesn’t just race—he was born into it. His dad built racing engines, and by the time Benston was a kid, he was tearing around in go-karts. He started in Junior Dragsters and kept racing until he was 18, moving up to bracket racing in his dad’s Oldsmobile. But the real turning point came when longtime racer Buck Jarvis decided to step away from the driver’s seat of his Outlaw 10.5 1969 Camaro.

“We’re either selling out or you’re driving. I’ve had enough,” Jarvis told him. That was all it took. Up until that point, the fastest Mark had ever been was 9.60 seconds in the quarter-mile. Then, in just his third pass behind the wheel of the Outlaw car, he ran a 4.30 in the eighth-mile. That’s when everything escalated.

Now, with the Haltech-equipped Blackberry Rocket, Benston has cemented himself in history as one of the fastest radial tire racers on the planet.

His car—the Blackberry Rocket—had been sitting in a garage, untouched for three years. The car is owned by Dale Collins Jr., who had replaced his Raspberry Rocket with it but never raced it. When Benston found himself in the middle of the 2021 points championship, he and his team worked around the clock to get the car ready. It came together just in time, and by the end of the season, he had won the championship.

The Blackberry Rocket runs a 588X big-block Chevy, a cast block with cast heads, and a Liberty transmission with a Quick Drive converter drive. But what really gives it an edge is the Haltech Nexus R5 system, which allows real-time tuning adjustments through rotary knobs, shock sensors, ride height sensors, and more. Dale is one of the ones that did the harness for the car. Benston credits Dale for being the guy he can always count on when he “weren’t smart enough to know what I was doing, how to set something up in the Haltech.”

At the 2023 Haltech World Cup Finals, Benston was determined to push the limits. But the weekend didn’t start well. “We struggled all through qualifying,” he admitted. After four rounds, he was sitting outside the field. Then, in Q5, everything clicked. “We got our stuff together and we went 5.75, set the record.” That was just the beginning. In the next three rounds, he reset the record with a 5.73, then a 5.71, then a 5.69. In the finals, the car delivered a 5.69 at 254 mph—the fastest radial tire car ever.

Winning the World Cup Finals was one thing. But setting the record made it even sweeter. The trophy weighs about 32 lbs, and Benston realized just how heavy it was when his crew filled it with beer and tried to make him chug it. “I couldn’t pick it up far enough to even get a sip out of it,” he laughed.

Despite the win, Benston isn’t done. “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,” he said. And knowing his drive, there’s a good chance he’ll do exactly that.