During the 2016 offseason, Jack Beckman’s Funny Car team at Don Schumacher Racing went through wholesale changes.

His crew chiefs became John Medlen, Dean Antonelli and Neal Strausbaugh, and the trio helped Beckman reach the winner’s circle at the Summernationals at Englishtown, N.J. It was the first win of the season for Beckman in Terry Chandler's Infinite Hero Foundation Dodge Charger nitro Funny Car.

Beckman clocked a 4.100-second time at 312.42 mph to beat Ron Capps’ 4.143-second lap.

“Not only did we only have a whole team change in the offseason we’ve had three crew members change during the season,” Beckman said. “Apparently people don’t like me nearly as much as I thought, so it has been a lot variables there. We are not where we want to be. We are where we want to be today, but we still have to work on this car. We will probably stay after Bristol (Tenn., the next race) and test the thing. It was an odd race weekend and a very, very hot race track. It became a crapshoot down there in a lot of the races turning into a pedal fest.”

Beckman defeated Jim Campbell, Cruz Pedregon, Courtney Force and Capps.

“We dodged a huge bullet when Courtney had a redlight against us in the semis, but we are the ones holding the trophy,” Beckman said. “When I go down there and stand next to that Infinite Hero Charger with our seven crew guys and three crew chiefs they are going to realize they were the best today and we needed to get that one, so they know we can do this. The first one is always the best one. Not having Terry Chandler here is a big deal, and this trophy is going to go to her and hopefully she will get better and we can win some more of these.”

Beckman, the 2012 NHRA nitro Funny Car world champion, captured the 25th win of his career – and his first at Englishtown.

“Winning at Englishtown is a big one,” Beckman said. “This is the Summernationals and a Summernationals win in a Funny Car is about as cool as they get. I got strapped in the car before the final round and we were going to do a live TV deal and then all of a sudden there’s a delay and I appreciate that. The NHRA track safari went out and scraped the race track and I love the fact that they recognized that was the most important thing even if it was a few minutes delay, we wanted to give the fans a side-by-side show, so I applaud everybody who spent the extra effort scraping the race track and prepping it for us.”