There’s no question Jack Beckman had huge shoes to fill as the fill-in driver for the legendary John Force.
Beckman, who won the 2012 Funny Car championship, on July 30 was named as the replacement driver for John Force to finish out the season. Force continues to recover from a traumatic brain injury he suffered in a June 23 racing crash near Richmond, Va. Beckman drove the final eight races of the 2024 NHRA season for Force, winning twice.
Beckman’s latest win came at the season finale, the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals, on Sunday in Pomona, Calif.
Beckman, driving a JFR Camaro, clocked a 3.812-second time at 327.35 mph to defeat his JFR teammate and 2024 nitro Funny Car champion Austin Prock, who slowed to 5.028 seconds.
“If I didn’t like driving so much, I’d retire right now. It doesn’t get any higher than this,” Beckman said. “I won here at the 2019 Finals, at the 2020 Winternationals and I haven’t raced at Pomona since then. So, look, when at Pomona, you get double the shots of anywhere else. I raced Super Comp here for 20-something years and was fortunate enough to win it twice. It’s just magical at your home track. It’s special when it’s the Winternationals. When the Winternationals was the first race of the year, it’s still going to be special next year if I get to suit up for that event. But the Finals are the Finals, right? Whoever wins here gets a couple months to say, ‘We were the baddest on race day.'”
By NHRA rules, when a driver is unable to compete, the race team may employ a substitute who can earn points for the original driver in a maximum of eight events. That meant that when Beckman rolled to the starting line for qualifying in Brainerd, Minn., on Aug. 16, he was continuing Force’s pursuit of a 17th title.
And, thanks to his performance filling in, Beckman helped Force finish second in the points standings, 166 behind Prock.
Beckman was a championship driver for Don Schumacher Racing, but he was out of the cockpit for nearly four years … not that he was counting.
“You mean for three years, nine months? But who was counting? I’m still a fan of the sport, and I enjoy coming out, come to Pomona twice a year,” Beckman said. “I took my son to Chicago. He designed the paint scheme for Chris King’s Funny Car, but I work a regular job. I don’t have the money and the time to travel, so I didn’t get to follow the tour much. I’d record all the races, come home, get an hour into it, then get backed up with work and I just really hadn’t been following the sport.
“A lot of little things had changed, and then I come back up here, and the pits are completely rearranged. You feel like you’ve been out forever when something is altered, whether it’s a procedure or location or something like that. As good a fan as I am, it hurts to come back out here. Prudhomme did it the right way, right? He said, ‘That’s it. It’s my last year driving. Then I’m going to be an owner.’ And he did that well. (Kenny) Bernstein did it the right way with the Forever Red Tour.
“Then had to come back and fill in for Brandon (Bernstein), then decided, ‘What the hell? I’ll get back in Funny Car for a little bit.’ So, Don Prudhomme is the only guy that said, ‘That’s my retirement.’ The rest of us ran out of money or time or health. So, to be able to come back here and get another shot at it, to be able to come back here and get a shot at it in a car that could win races, in a car that did win races, right? I said in St. Louis, it’s one thing to know that you’re capable of winning. It’s a completely different deal to stand there with the trophy at the end of the day.”
Beckman won for the first time in 2024 at the Midwest Nationals in Force’s Peak Antifreeze and Coolant Chevrolet Camaro SS on Sept. 29 at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis.
In the finals, Beckman clocked a 3.856-second elapsed time at 315.86 mph to defeat Ron Capps’ 3.882, 329.42.
The latest Pomona win was Beckman’s 35th nitro Funny Car Wally. His win was overshadowed by Prock clinching his first title Saturday. But Beckman wasn’t complaining about the lack of attention being paid to him.
“They’ve hardly talked to me this weekend. This weekend’s about Austin. That’s the story,” Beckman said. And I said, ‘I’m cool with that.’ It’s okay. Sometimes you kind of slide under the radar. No, there wasn’t any animosity or jealousy or whatnot. Now I remembered days that’s like,
‘What do we have to do to get an interview here?’ No, we had a great run in (that) hot rod, but when Austin goes out there, runs 3.804 — which by the way, had it not been for that run, we would’ve made the quickest run of the year and the quickest run of my career by a pretty substantial margin — I didn’t feel slighted in the least, trust me.”
With his win Sunday, Beckman tied the legendary Prudhomme with Funny Car wins at 35.
“Yeah. I’m not Don Prudhomme, right? You have to judge a man or a woman by their timetable by when they were doing what they were doing. And I’m really curious to see something in writing from you on this,” Beckman said. “In the 1970s, Don Prudhomme won everything. There were some national events, there were a lot of divisional races, and then there was a whole lot of one-off really big events. That guy won everything. In the mid-1990s, (John) Force was pretty tough to beat there, but in 2024, what the Prock guys did this year, that’s unbelievable, and you could argue about years that didn’t have a lot of competition out there. There’s a lot of quality race cars out here this year. There’s an unbelievable number of cars capable of winning the national event that didn’t because the Prock family took those trophies.”
Prock won eight races this season and was the No. 1 qualifier an NHRA Funny Car record 15 times.
“So, Don Prudhomme, his head and shoulders, he was eight feet tall when I was seven. I still think he’s eight feet tall,” Beckman said. “You’ve spent a lot of time talking to him. It’s still a pinch-me moment that he even knows my name and I know you’ve got a lot of reverence for him. It’s a number and it puts us on the same row as him. I ain’t in the same column with that. I’m just not. And I’m totally okay with that, and maybe my career’s not over. I was at 35 national-event wins four months ago. I’m at 37 now; two in Super Comp and 35 in Funny Car. Pretty freaking cool. Whatever that number is, it’s pretty cool.”
Beckman acknowledged he relished winning in Pomona for many reasons.
“John took me aside before the final round and he said, ‘It’s your day. Go do your thing.’ Now he may walk right over to Austin and say the same thing. I don’t know, but I tell people, when I raced against John for years and I did it for him and he did it for me,” Beckman said. “If he lost early and I was rolling up there for the finals against one of his daughters, he’d always walk over and give me a thumbs up and that felt cool. Because it was Babe Ruth telling you, ‘Do a good job, kid.’ When he did it today, he did it as my boss and it’s just different.
“Having him come back to the sport in person at Las Vegas was unbelievable. It just kind of really changed the complexity of stuff. Didn’t make us want to win more. We want to win every time we go out there. It made winning that much more special. And to see Brittany win after a two-year winless drought the day — or the weekend — her dad comes back and then Austin double up with her was just great.”
Following Prock and Beckman in the final points standings were Ron Capps, Matt Hagan, and Bob Tasca III.
