Jack Beckman sure does know how to make a race entertaining.

In the final round of the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals, in the lane that no one wanted, after a less than stellar weekend, Beckman matched up with Robert Hight in his third consecutive Funny Car final and won in dramatic fashion, crossing the finish line sideways and on fire following a spectacular explosion at Summit Motorsports Park.

Hight left first in the matchup of rival teams, but Beckman chased him down and then blew by the John Force Racing driver when Hight’s Auto Club Chevrolet Camaro went up in a cloud of smoke just past the tree. Then, just shy of the scoreboards, Beckman’s car let go in a fiery explosion, dislodging the blower and leaving Beckman battling to get the machine slowed on the top end.

While exciting, Beckman was uninjured in the incident, and was able to breath a sigh of relief and eventually garner a smile in collecting career win No. 26.

“You want to talk about the gamut of emotions in two-tenths of a second. It’s boom, win light, uh oh, fire,” an excited Beckman said moments after cross the stripe with a winning 4.073-second run at 311.85 mph. “There is not enough time to think about it. People say, ‘did you get nervous in there.’ Yeah, right when the engine started I got nervous. When something like that happens, it is not like driving down the freeway and the car spins out next to you and you almost hit them. Because we are so focused here, when something like that happens, I have got a set of emergency procedures. It’s chutes, brake lever, fire bottles, fuel. And you just program yourself to do that.

“After that, you are so relieved that you get out of the car in one piece, there is really not that sense of horror that you would have if you were driving a street vehicle. I don’t to (have an explosion), but it is part of the job.

“If you go swimming with the sharks, every once in awhile, a great white is going to surface.”

While the final was certainly spectacular, the rest of Beckman’s day was far less memorable. Beckman had a less than stellar car throughout the weekend, qualifying ninth while having lane choice only once throughout the afternoon.

Beckman collected wins over DSR teammates Tommy Johnson Jr. and Matt Hagan, along with Cruz Pedregon, recording bracket-like passes of 4.073, 4.074, 4.078 and 4.060 on race day. Hight collected wins over Bob Tasca, Alexis DeJoria and Jim Campbell.

Hagan suffered a similar incident to his teammate in their second-round matchup when Hagan’s engine let go with the lead just past the 660-foot mark, advancing Beckman on the ladder.

With the win, Beckman collects his third career victory at the Norwalk, Ohio-based track. He is the only active nitro driver to win at the track more than once.

“We were consistently a bit off out there,” Beckman said. “The problem is it was swallowing up our tuneup changes. For the semi we threw a different supercharger on it, threw a different short block on it, and it just ate them up. It just didn’t respond to it. So we threw some timing at it for the final round and, the problem is, you don’t have time in 45 minutes to diagnose why our car is not listening to us.

“But we were consistent. And what happens when you start running consistent is the other cars know they have to step up a little. We enjoyed a little bit of that these last couple weekends. We weren’t spectacular, but our car went to the finish line.”

Even more impressive, Beckman got it done all afternoon at Summit Motorsports Park in the left lane, a lane that no team wanted to run.

“It’s amazing. Its 30 foot wide, 1,000 feet long and straight, just like the right lane,” Beckman said. “A lot of times I think it is monkey see, monkey do. People just kind of emulate what the person in front of them has done. We ran left lane first round because we didn’t have lane choice. We had lane choice one time in the second round and we decided to stay there. Fortunately for us, we didn’t have to worry about it the last two rounds because we weren’t the quickest of the two cars.”

With three consecutive finals, Beckman will get a week off before returning to action in two weeks. Between now and then, he hopes to see his current car scrapped, and return in Chicago with a brand new ride.

“What I would like to do, officially, is retire that car now,” Beckman said. “That thing’s got close to 700 runs on the rear end. It’s got 159 on the front half, which is more than we typically go. We’ve got a car upstairs with 30 runs on it. We are going to unload and test it tomorrow and I have a feeling it is going to make a difference.

“We are only a few tenths of a second off of where we would like to be. It’s not even a blink of an eye, but we need to pick that up. I have every confidence that we will pick that up. We want to win more races and win a championship, so by Indy we have to have a combination that listens to us.”