"Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," is all Jack Beckman could say after qualifying the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car in No. 12 for the NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka.

After experiencing DNQs (Did Not Qualify) in the last two events, the 2008 Phoenix winner was ecstatic to qualify here under hot and humid conditions with a strong pass of 4.940 seconds at 306.12 mph, which he established in the cooler Friday night session.

His other attempts included a 4.993/295.98 (No. 3), a 7.223/113.75 (No. 12) and a solid 4.984/303.43 in the final round. "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," is all Jack Beckman could say after qualifying the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car in No. 12 for the NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka.

After experiencing DNQs (Did Not Qualify) in the last two events, the 2008 Phoenix winner was ecstatic to qualify here under hot and humid conditions with a strong pass of 4.940 seconds at 306.12 mph, which he established in the cooler Friday night session.

His other attempts included a 4.993/295.98 (No. 3), a 7.223/113.75 (No. 12) and a solid 4.984/303.43 in the final round.

"This has been a wild weekend so far," said Beckman. "I saw some strange things in Funny Car qualifying, like cones getting knocked over, people red lighting, engines blowing up, throttles sticking. It was an entertaining show for the fans.

"The cool thing for the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge is that we started off with a conservative run; we're still getting the (crew chief) Johnny West tune-up perfected. We stepped up a little bit for Q2. In qualifying run 3 we went a little bit over center. We actually smoked the tires, but the nice thing about that is it really wasn't a bad thing that we smoked the tires. This was the first time in a long time that it actually was important. We just discovered where the threshold was, so we backed it down a little bit and went down the race track in the last session.

"It is just so nice making a good run on Friday. It just postures you for the whole weekend. I think we're learning a little bit every run down the track.

"We get to race on Sunday. It's been three races since I got to work on Sunday. I am excited. I don’t know who we're racing and I don't care. We're going to try to get this Valvoline/MTS Dodge down the race track the quickest that we can and hopefully our win light comes on first round."

Beckman in fact faces Bristol winner Melanie Troxel in first round of eliminations on Sunday.