For years, Bob Book’s specialty was working on carburetors.
Now, he’s gaining quick notoriety as an engine builder at his Book Racing Enterprises Inc., shop in Bonfield, Ill. Bonfield is about 30 miles south of Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill.
Book’s BRE engine grabbed headlines when ANDRA Pro Stock racer Lee Bektash clocked a 200.14 mph run during the Sydney (Australia) Nationals Nov. 2. Bektash was running a BRE engine and he made history by becoming the first small-block powered Pro Stock car to eclipse 200 mph.
For years, Bob Book’s specialty was working on carburetors.
Now, he’s gaining quick notoriety as an engine builder at his Book Racing Enterprises Inc., shop in Bonfield, Ill. Bonfield is about 30 miles south of Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill.
Book’s BRE engine grabbed headlines when ANDRA Pro Stock racer Lee Bektash clocked a 200.14 mph run during the Sydney (Australia) Nationals Nov. 2. Bektash was running a BRE engine and he made history by becoming the first small-block powered Pro Stock car to eclipse 200 mph.
“That was the first naturally-aspirated small block to ever run over 200 mph in a door car,” Book said. “It was certainly a big deal for us and what we do because that’s what we do is naturally-aspirated so that was a big weekend for us. We were just tremendously excited about that engine (Bektash was running). Over the course of whatever career in motorsports you have most records are always there to get broken, being that this was the first to go over 200 mph, that’s something that’s there forever.”
Book acknowledged Bektash’s amazing run was the result of a lot of hard work.
“He was running a 399 cubic inch engine,” Book said. “Their Pro Stock is a small-block class, 401-cubic inches is max and over here (in NHRA) Pro Stock is 500-cubic inch maximum. We’ve been doing work over there (Australia) for the last three years, basically since we started building engines really. It is the evolution of what we have been doing over there. I’ve done carburetors for years and that’s what I’m mostly known for and we always dabbled in engines. In 2011, we decided to be more assertive and really try to turn our shop into an engine shop as well as carburetors and we’ve surprised ourselves along the way.”
Book believes being fairly new in the engine building business has benefitted him.
“Part of the reason that we’ve gotten to the point where we are really on top of the small block naturally aspirated market right now is probably because we are reasonably new,” Book said. “Sometimes when you do something for a long, long time it gets hard to make changes. We come in with some fresh ideas because we haven’t been doing this that long, and we weren’t as encumbered by old habits like some people are which I actually think works to our advantage. Plus, I know what also works to our advantage is the fact of my background in carburetors and that part of the engine.”
Bektash also set the ANDRA Pro Stock elapsed time record in Sydney with a 6.877-second pass in the first round of eliminations.
In the finals, Bektash’s 200.14-mph run helped him beat fellow Mopar racer Nino Cavallo, who also was using a BRE engine.
“We do a lot of competition eliminator stuff over here (in the United States) for a lot of the top running cars,” Book said. “We are getting more and more work all the time and that’s why these big jumps in power have come about because we don’t have 25 years of experience to draw on, we are still kind of finding our way so to speak. The strange thing about it is I have gotten more of a response from the American market over what the Australian (Bektash) ran than what I have got from Australia. The thing is it is a class (Australian Pro Stock) that gets a lot of attention over here in the States because for hard core racers like Pro Stock guys, a small-block class like that is something that people dream of having over here in the States. So, I got a big response from the Pro Stock contingency over here (in the United States) because to go 200 mph in one of those is a big accomplishment and definitely something to scratch off the bucket list.”
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