Finally.

In what can only be described as a huge sigh of relief, Jack Beckman and his Don Schumacher Racing-backed team broke through in a big way on Sunday with their second win of the season and first since March to earn the Wally at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway.

Beckman overcame a starting position in the bottom half of the field and a tough ladder on Sunday to reach his third final round of the year, eventually taking down his DSR teammate Tommy Johnson Jr. in the final.

“I feel a heck of a lot better today than I felt yesterday. I don’t think one race can make or break you, but I feel like, if nothing else, this changes everybody’s psychology on this team,” Beckman said. “I like the way that we didn’t start out phenomenally. We picked away at this thing, got a little bit better on Saturday than Friday relative to track conditions and we got significantly better each and every time down the racetrack today.

“You know you are capable of winning and yeah, we won Gainesville, but that was a long time ago. Drag racing is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ type of sport, so to put it back in the winner’s circle again just reaffirms that, here we are coming up on the Countdown, and we have a contending car.”

And what a win it was.

In a rare final round meeting between Beckman and Johnson, two teammates that not only share a team, but also a significant bond in the late Terry Chandler who backed both teams, Beckman got it done with a solid light and a tremendous pass, racing to a 3.961-second lap at 325.69 mph in the Infinite Hero Dodge Charger to collect his 28th career win.

Johnson, in his second final round of the season, recorded a 4.031 at 319.67 mph in the runner-up effort in the Make-A-Wish Dodge.

“You know, everybody is saying that we can’t lose because a Terry Chandler car is going to win the final round, except, we can lose,” Beckman said. “We are the Infinite Hero car and we want to win. I told the FS1 crew after the semis, if Make-A-Wish beats us, they earned it and they deserve it and I would be happy for them. But nobody goes into a final round saying, ‘ah hell, if we don’t win it is not a big deal.’ It is a big deal. You don’t know if your last win is your last win.

“We have struggled, it is no secret. We haven’t had the car we had early in the season. We changed chassis, we changed clutches, we faced the track prep reduction and had a tough time adapting to that. We weren’t exactly stellar Friday or Saturday. But we kept going directionally correct every run that we made and we picked away at this thing and it worked out in our favor.”

Beckman faced quite a murderers row of Funny Car heavy hitters on Sunday after struggling to a 14th place position in qualifying, surviving Courtney Force, Shawn Langdon and Matt Hagan on his way to the final.

Both Hagan and Beckman dropped cylinders in a tight round-one matchup that saw Beckman come out ahead with a 4.044 to a 4.101 before another close race in round two. In that race Langdon got the jump on his opponent, but Beckman was able to fire back with his first three-second pass of the weekend, a winning 3.980 to a 4.019.

In the semifinal, another tough out awaited in points leader Force and another great drag race saw Beckman advance on the strength of a 3.968 at 325.14 mph. Force, reaching at least the semifinals for the 11th time this year, had a 4.040 at 320.51 mph.

Johnson defeated J.R. Todd, Tim Wilkerson and Del Worsham to earn his second runner-up finish of the season.

“When you go first round against Hagan and (Dickie) Venables and you know what they are capable of on an overcast, smooth racetrack like Brainerd, hold on. You are going up against Hercules and Hercules with that pair and we put a run down that wasn’t a crusher, it wasn’t a backbreaker, but it was good enough. Even though we put a cylinder out early, it was still a good run and just getting that win was huge,” Beckman said. “That is when we knew we had more capability in the car. If we could get it to keep all eight cylinders lit to the finish line we’d put a more representative pass up and we did that second round. We haven’t been out of the second round in forever so we pull up next to Langdon and to get past that one was a huge hurdle as well. Then we stood on it a little more for the semis and here we are.

“The whole field was stacked up. The slowest car on the grounds was a 4.14 and if you went between a 3.99 and a 4.03 there were 10 other cars bunched in there. Yes, we qualified 14th, but we weren’t far from sixth. Trust me, nobody wants to start from 14th. It is not the greatest place because you are going to race No. 3 first round and No. 6 second round if the ladder stacks up and those are already cars that have run better than you. We did a great job of taking what we had and worked with it.”

With the win, Beckman moves up a spot to fourth in the championship standings with one race remaining before the cutoff in the Countdown to the Championship.

But, just as important, earning such an emotional win Beckman said after that this Wally was heading to a very special place as the team prepares to head to the biggest race of the year in two weeks in Indy.

“The entire crew is going to sign (the Wally) and it is going home to Doug Chandler tonight,” Beckman said. “Doug is such a modest guy, such a soft spoken guy, he would never ask for something like this. I know it is tough memories because it is so hard to think of drag racing without thinking of his wife of 40 years, but it is a good way for her to keep living on in our hearts.”