These types of weekends never get old for nitro Funny Car driver Jack Beckman.

Beckman, the 2012 NHRA world champion, qualified No. 1 at the Gatornationals and raced away to the national-event win Sunday.

Beckman, the pilot of the Don Schumacher Racing Infinite Hero Foundation Dodge, beat his DSR teammate Matt Hagan in the final round at Gainesville Raceway.

Beckman clocked 4.035-second elapsed time at 323.58 mph to edge Hagan, who had a quicker elapsed time of 4.034 seconds at 322.04 mph. The difference came at the starting line as Beckman had a .051 reaction time, while Hagan, the 2011 and 2014 world champ, had a .062 reaction time.

This is the first time in NHRA history that the first three races of a season have been won by a No. 1 qualifier in nitro Funny Car.

This is Beckman’s 27th career nitro Funny Car national event win and first at the Gatornationals. Beckman defeated Jim Campbell, Del Worsham, Shawn Langdon and Hagan during his victory parade. This was DSR’s 320th national event victory. Beckman moved from sixth to second in NHRA’s Funny Car points standings.

“I never got close (to winning the Gatornationals) and it was such a bucket list thing,” Beckman said. “My job is try to go out there and try not and screw up their tuning. We knew first round was going to be throw at it conditions and then everything after that was going to be a question mark depending on what the clouds did.”

In the post-race session, Beckman also discussed what it was like vying for a Wally with his teammate – Hagan.

“Have you ever seen Matt Hagan?” Beckman said. “It is not hard to get up for Matt Hagan. (Ron) Capps always says it is easier for him to get up for his teammates because he thinks they are three toughest cars out there. I think there’s a lot of validity to that, but there’s a lot of depth and talent in Funny Car this year. Throughout the season the Schumacher cars are going to be right there. It’s not like when you pull up against Tommy Johnson Jr. and think hey they haven’t been running that good or even if they haven’t you know what they are capable of. They have the same machine shop parts, same fabrication shop parts, and the same level of talent over there. That’s one thing Don insures that all seven of his cars have all the best so there are no excuses when you go up there. Then, when he started selling our machine shop parts and the crew chiefs said wait a minute, we helped design a better part and now your selling it and he said yep if they can beat us with our parts we don’t have the right people here. We have to outthink them. I think it is super easy to stay at that level against a Schumacher car.”

And, Beckman couldn’t be prouder to drive the Infinite Hero entry.

“I flew in a day earlier, and on Thursday I went to the Hall of Fame (dinner),” Beckman said. “I got to present Johnny Gray with the Pat Garlits award in honor of Terry Chandler, whose name is still on the side of our car and is the one who made all of this possible. There are 21 of us who have jobs today because of Terry Chandler and how big her heart was, and now her husband Doug wants to carry it on. He’s loving it because he knows Terry is looking down and saying, ‘Alright – my boys did it.”