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Last week, Kenny Bernstein, one of the most revered figures in drag racing over the last 30 years, took his proverbial final bow and called it a career as a team owner and driver in the sport that made him a legend. A drag racer since he quit school in 1966 and a full time, professional racer since 1979, the “King of Speed” amassed 69 NHRA national event victories, four consecutive Funny Car championships, two Top Fuel championships, 18 victories as an owner, a spot within the top 10 on NHRA’s 50 Greatest Drivers list, induction into the Don Garlits International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, and induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame next May. Along the way, the Texas native shattered the record books and left behind a number of moments forever stamped in time.

While many of today’s fans deem Tony Schumacher’s 2006 championship-winning lap in Pomona as “The Run,” it’s Bernstein’s 301.70 MPH pass at the 1992 NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla. that’s seared into the memory of drag racing fans and historians. The 300 MPH barrir was widely considered to be the final major milestone in the sport, and that singular pass cemented Bernstein’s title as the “King Speed.”

It was in 1980 that Bernstein, considered one of sports greatest businessmen, struck a deal with Anheuser-Busch and the Budweiser brand for his full-time racing efforts in the Funny Car category. Bernstein would carry the famous “Budweiser King” name on his Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters for the next thirty years, marking the longest continuous primary sponsorship in motorsports history.

At the 1993 Chief Auto Parts Winternationals in Pomona, paired up alongside reigning champ Joe Amato, Bernstein’s “Budweiser King” dragster lost an engine as it neared the finish line, cutting a tire and sending the car careening into and over the guardrail on TNN’s live television broadcast, making for one of the most famous crash scenes in drag racing history.

During his career, Bernstein held the distinction of being the first and only team owner with wins in each of America’s three major motorsports series: NHRA drag racing, NASCAR, and CART. Along the way, he aligned himself with some of the biggest names in the automotive and non-automotive market and stopped at nothing to promote his sponsors, his racing teams, or the sport of drag racing. Along with the Quaker State commercial seen here with Hollywood star Burt Reynolds, Bernstein’s commercial aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is also a thing of legend.

In 1987, Bernstein and longtime crew chief Dale Armstrong, with their big bucks sponsorship from Budweiser, debuted a radical and certainly controversial Buick Le Sabre body on their nitro flopper that was well ahead of its time and considered to have paved the way for the aerodynamic wedges that we see today. Bernstein won the opener in Pomona and six other events for a record-tying total of seven, recorded the first 5.3-second pass, and won a third consecutive tile in dominating fashion.