Brooks Weisblat is well known as the man behind the DragTimes YouTube channel. We often see him at the wheel of a supercar or fast electric car, tearing down the drag strip and showing what they can do. His videos are incredibly popular.
But there was a time when he wasn’t doing YouTube. In fact, as we see in his video, Weisblat was once the “street racing kingpin of Florida.” This came after he became involved in Miami’s underground racing scene, inspired in part by The Fast and the Furious.
Over time, however, Weisblat began to move away from that and started doing his YouTube channel. But as the channel became more popular, his past endeavors came back to the forefront. It even led to news reports giving him his kingpin nickname, and it led to some interesting times for the YouTuber.
He recently sat down with VINwiki, founded by Ed Bolian, to discuss his past and how it eventually led to a very successful YouTube channel. The man has had one hell of a life, and it’s fascinating to hear him talk about it so candidly in this interview on the VINwiki YouTube channel.
How Weisblat Became Involved in Miami Street Racing
Street racing was something that Weisblat got involved in quite quickly, and The Fast and the Furious was very similar to what he and his friends were doing in real life. He even raced in a Mazda RX-7, a car that would become a star thanks to the movies. “It was a crazy cool experience,” Weisblat said in the video, recounting how he would beat a Dodge Viper in his RX-7.
A lot of this happened after hours in the dead of night, although the police did once get involved. They blockaded a street that Weisblat and his friends were racing on, but he did escape arrest. After that, he decided to rein in the street racing. “I learned my lesson pretty quick,” he said in the video. This was before the YouTube channel took off, and in the earlier days, there was street racing on the DragTimes channel.
As the videos got bigger, people would recognize the spots and begin street racing themselves in those spots. At that point, Weisblat said, “This is getting a little crazy,” especially after he bought a 2017 Ford GT. That is when street racing on the channel ended. It was at this point that a news channel called up the YouTuber.
A News Channel Said It Had Been Investigating Weisblat
“I got a call from a news station,” Weisblat said in the video. Initially, it sounded like they just wanted to talk about the channel, but they then asked him about the racing on the public roads. “We’ve been investigating you three or four months now,” they said, and at that point Weisblat called up an attorney. They said, just don’t talk to them, and don’t give them what they want. But it turned out the news channel had been conducting a secret investigation, following Weisblat around, and watching the drag races.
“It was pretty bad,” said Weisblat when the news story broke, and it made him and his friends out to be very bad people. “They said I was the kingpin of drag racing in South Florida,” Weisblat said. It was a damaging and embarrassing story, and the police eventually barricaded some roads off, even though Weisblat had long decided not to race on the roads.
Weisblat Did Get Pulled Over by the Police Once
Incredibly, during the COVID lockdowns, Weisblat and a friend or two would go driving in their supercars, just out of sheer boredom after being stuck at home. On one of these occasions, they went out with fishing rods, which they’d use as an alibi, and a police officer stopped them. Weisblat feared the worst, but this officer recognized the car and just wanted to say hello and have a look at the McLaren 720S Weisblat was driving. After that, things calmed down, and Weisblat’s channel is now one of the most respected in the automotive content creation world. And the street racing days are long behind him.