"I’ve been involved in racing since I was 13. I raced motor cross when I was a kid, and then jumped into cars, and it has been go-go-go ever since then," Berner explained.

However, when a twist of fate occurred in the form of a devastating Pro Stock crash, Berner was forced to re-evaluate his position.
 
Berner’s main business, Performance Mechanical, is in its eighth year and focuses on industrial air-conditioning units in hospitals.
 
"If you remember back, that is when I crashed. I had a very bad crash," Berner said. "I loved racing so much that I had never devoted the effort to starting our own business. We never really took the opportunity to start our own business, and this was as good of time as any."

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Berner’s crash at Darlington International Dragway was of somewhat epic proportions. Tumbling end over end nearly 14 times, with his wife watching from the starting line, he re-evaluated his life-long passion for racing.

"The tape of the crash was sold to Real TV. There was nothing left of the car. You see Rev. Jim (Hartley) holding Cheryl and not letting her near the car," Berner explained. "In the emergency room, not knowing what was happening, I was hurting so bad inside, that I really didn’t know – and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me, that I thought, ‘I am really messed up here. This doesn’t seem too good.’ To take that kind of a crash, to see the look on their faces, well, if Cheryl would have told me that she couldn’t go through this again, I probably would have quit."

Added Berner, "Cheryl said, ‘You really want to race don’t you?’ She has been around racing since we met. In fact, two weeks after we were married, I looped a car around in the lights at a local track in the sportsman level. For her to say what she did, she is a really good friend and she knows how much racing means to me. It is all I have ever done."

Despite having the support of his wife, Berner said he knew he needed some time before jumping back into the driver’s seat. 

At the time of the crash, he had a new car being built by Rick Jones. He decided to put the car on hold and told Rick to sell the car he was working on but to hold the deposit and that he would do something down the road.

Turning his efforts towards developing his business, Berner headed back to the hospital setting he was so familiar with.
 
"Everything is geared toward hospitals. It is all I have ever done. My engineering degree was attributed to working in the hospitals. I started out in a trade and went to school to get my engineering degree, with the help of the hospital I started working with. Now, it turns out that I am doing all of their work. I’ve been with that hospital for 32 years."

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By the end of the first year of being in business for himself, he had 15 employees working for him. Today, Performance Mechanical, along with its spin-off businesses now employs around 35 full-time workers, all in the Chicago area.
 
"We control the size of our growth, which we never thought would happen. It goes all back to my racing," Berner said.
 
Berner’s love of racing closely correlates to his love for his career.

"I like the technology, and I like the competition more so than anything, which is probably why I do so well in the air-conditioning business. There is a lot of competition in that, as well," Berner said.

"My motivation is the technology involved in going fast. Driving a car is really a bonus. It is fun to drive them, but my focus is the technology aspect. When the car runs really well, and typically it runs pretty good for us, it is very challenging. The little changes that you do to see how the car performs are what keep me intrigued. Sometimes it is good, but a lot of times it is bad. To be able to go back and focus on that, it is probably the most rewarding. 

"The fuel systems on these race cars are very similar to how I tune some of these big industrial boilers. These big-horsepower boilers you tune with a laptop, and with these cars it is the same way. It goes hand-in-hand with what I do."

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With Berner’s love for racing being tied in so closely to his passion towards his profession, it wasn’t long before he was ready to climb back into the racing saddle.  
Although it took him some time to turn back to Pro Stock, there was no doubt that his roots were in a door car, and it was only a matter of time before he returned to full-time competition.

"I’ve always loved the door cars. I started by racing Top Sportsman, and then I got into Pro Mod. We had nitrous motors and were burning them up like crazy," Berner said. "We tried our own engine program. We had a really good car -- we could just never get the engine program up to where we would like to see it.

"One thing led to another, and John Nobile and I got to be really good friends. And I ended up buying one of his cars. He hooked me up with [engine builder] John Kaase, and it was like a match made in Heaven. I’ve been with John ever since. I race because of those guys. If I had to choose and race somewhere else because something happened to John or something like that, I don’t think I would race. John is what it is. He tries to make everything equal with everybody else. He takes a lot of pride in his work."

Berner’s return to racing came in the NHRA’s now defunct Pro Stock Truck class.
 
"It took me a long time to get my confidence back in driving the car, and I owe a lot of that to Pat Norcia of RAM Clutches and Bob Gillig," he said.

Berner’s return to Pro Stock racing has been a success, culminating in 2004, with a win during the elite shootout program during the World Nationals.
 
With his racing program and business ventures running full-steam-ahead, the 50-year-old has only one thing left to take care of: himself. With the help of Norcia, Berner has taken on a new challenge that he has found to benefit both his overall well-being.

"I begin my day at 4:30 in the morning," Berner said. "I run five days a week, and I weight train, as well. I try to run between 30-40 miles a week. It gets me set up for the day. I plan my whole program for what I am going to do during the day while I’m running. Then I try to weight train in the afternoon three to four days a week. It depends on the stress level throughout the week. In the meantime, we spend about 12 hours a day working with the business. On the weekends Cheryl and I aren’t racing, we work at the business.

"You can’t believe the focus and discipline you gain by doing this, and how it relates to being in the car," he said. "The lights that you cut have a lot to do with that training."