Veteran tunerJohn Medlen confirmed to Competition Plus he left John Force Racing and started working with Don Schumacher Racing on Monday.

"I will be helping (crew chief) Jimmy (Prock) on Jack Beckman's (Funny) car," Medlen said. "I guess my official title would be assistant crew chief."

Veteran tunerJohn Medlen confirmed to Competition Plus he left John Force Racing and started working with Don Schumacher Racing on Monday.

"I will be helping (crew chief) Jimmy (Prock) on Jack Beckman's (Funny) car," Medlen said. "I guess my official title would be assistant crew chief."

Prock was the crew chief for John Force's nitro Funny Car before resigning at JFR just prior to the Las Vegas fall race.

"Jimmy and I had a great working relationship for many, many, many years, and we worked well on Force's car," Medlen said. "Jimmy is one of these guys who likes to try new things, and that is just about basically all I do is search for new things, new solutions, and new technology. But, if you can't parlay it onto a car then it is all kind of an exercise in futulity. I just had an opportunity to work with Jimmy and try to keep going forward with new things, both with safety and performance, and I didn't want to stop that momentum."

Medlen acknowledged departing from JFR wasn't easy.

"Yeah, it was a real difficult decision," Medlen said. "You just have to kind of add up the plusses and minuses and make a decision. It comes down to being very difficult, and at some point you have to make a decision. I needed to go forward with the current things we were working on."

Medlen said Beckman will make his first test laps of the offseason in January at Palm Beach (Fla.) International Raceway Nitro Jam.

Beckman, the 2012 NHRA nitro Funny Car world champion, failed to make The Countdown to the Championship  last season, finishing 11th in points and he had zero race wins.

"I'm optimistic and enthusiastic about 2015," Medlen said. "We are flogging every aspect of the car. We will say the setup, the tuneup and the parts and pieces. We are working day and  night. We think we are in a good position to win. I'm real excited because new things, not all of it works, but you have to keep flogging the new stuff to try and get ahead and improve the performance and the cosistency and make the window of operation wider so you can win those rounds when everything doesn't work exactly perfect. The days pass and the months pass and if you don't continue to make some sort of progress, you may stay the same which is fine for today, but tomorrow's  competition is going forward and they are going to win. We really would not want to do this if we didn't have an opportunity to try and win."

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