The answer was not an immediate “Yes.”

In Jack Beckman’s heart, it was. However, the reality of his life away from drag racing for over three years mandated vital components that had to fall in place before he could accept the dream offer for any nitro drag racer on the sidelines. 

Beckman’s dream offer was to be the substitute driver for 17-time drag racing champion and the winningest Funny Car driver, John Force.  

“When Robert [Hight] called me, many things had to fall into place,” Beckman explained. “The sponsors had to be okay with it; the family had to be okay with it. Obviously, John and Robert had to be okay with it, and my work had to be okay with it.”

The other entities were on board with it. Beckman now had to convince the most critical factor in the equation on his side… his employer.  

So, how did Beckman convince his boss at the elevator repair business that he would need enough time off from the shop to pursue this dream, which wasn’t exactly conducive to efficient elevator repairs?

“I promised him tickets for Pomona,” Beckman said with a laugh.

Beckman’s relationship with the company dates back to 1988 when he worked for the supervisor’s grandfather. His boss was 110 percent behind Beckman’s opportunity. 

“He said, ‘Hey, I’m big on family. We’re a family here in the elevator trade. I know the race people are your family too,” Beckman recalled. “We sat down, we looked at the days. He said, ‘I can make this happen. Let’s do it.”

And just like that, Beckman was off to pursue what some would consider the dream of a lifetime. Indeed, this is how the past NHRA champion saw it, too, although he had different visions of his “dream” playing out. 

“I’d hoped, [but] not under these conditions,” Beckman said. “I thought my last chance to get back in the sport might be if John announced in a year or so that he was ready to retire, and I was lucky enough to be asked to take that seat. I never, ever thought it would be that Superman got injured. The whole thing’s surreal to me. I really thought that ship passed me by about getting back in a race car, and now here I am.”

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Prior to Norwalk, Beckman made his last runs in a fuel Funny Car at the NHRA Nevada Nationals in Las Vegas, losing in the first round to Paul Lee during the pandemic-shortened season. His employer, Don Schumacher Racing, began downsizing, including dissolving both teams fielded by Terry Chandler. 

On a sticky, humidity-filled day in Norwalk, Ohio, August 2, 2024, Beckman was reintroduced to driving a fuel Funny Car in the least favorable of conditions. 

“I’ll tell you the worst part: Getting strapped in,” Beckman admitted. “I don’t mean for the run, I mean getting all my safety equipment on. The car was still up on jack stands. I wanted to make sure the harnesses were all adjusted okay, and the seat inserts fit all right, getting in there. They went to tighten me down. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’ 

“I had a head cold, and it’s never fun getting in a car with a head cold. But I hadn’t done it for three-and-a-half years, and it was a little bit of, ‘I don’t want to be in here. I just don’t want to be in here.’

“My back was knotted up in the lower right side, and [when] they squeeze those harnesses down, it’s like, ‘Oh.’ 

“But once they pulled up the staging lines and I got strapped in, I was like, ‘Okay, I feel a little bit better now.'”

Then the engine fired in John Force’s PEAK-sponsored Funny Car, and Beckman nailed the throttle for his first burnout, which was tame by old-school Force standards. 

Then, he launched and drove to a 4.007-elapsed time at 308 miles per hour. Suddenly, the white noise in his head was gone for good. 

Some might say it’s like riding a bicycle. Beckman says it’s a matter of preparation and the teaching of two-time NHRA champion and veteran drag racing school instructor Frank Hawley. 

“I’d practice a lot of runs,” Beckman said of his preparation. I talked to Frank Hawley. Frank was out of the seat for ten years. He wasn’t in a Funny Car for 22 years when he got back in. I am a student of and a Frank Hawley Drag Racing School teacher, and he’s my go-to guy for getting your head straight.”

Interestingly, Beckman signed off on licenses for the Force girls, Brittany, Courtney, and even matriarch Laurie. Now he was getting his license back in a John Force Racing Funny Car.

“I just practiced a lot of runs at home,” Beckman added. “Once the car started up, I felt pretty good. It was literally getting those harnesses strapped down, and it was hot and humid out there in Norwalk, and it was like, ‘Ugh, I don’t miss this part of it.’ 

“I only stepped on the throttle six or seven times. Once I got strapped to the fourth time, it’s like, ‘Yeah, okay. You’re going to sweat a lot. This is part of the job. I miss this.”

Beckman completed his licensing credentials during the Summit Motorsports Park extravaganza, Night Under Fire. It was as if he never left. 

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“The whole weekend seemed surreal to me,” said Beckman, who finished runner-up to Dale Creasy in the Chicago-style format. “Go out there, strap in John Force’s car, make a bunch of runs, get to go 309 miles an hour, and say, ‘Okay, that’s what it feels like.

“Track conditions would not let us tune up to run 380s. I have no misperceptions that going 3.85 versus going 4.00 are entirely different zip codes. So my back and my butt, my brain still hasn’t experienced what that car’s going to give us under overcast national event conditions. But the fact that I could stand on the throttle that many times and get used to the repetition of doing that will help out and pay huge dividends for us. 

“It’s pretty cool that we can do something that has never happened in NHRA drag racing in this organization’s 70-plus-year history.”

The reality stands solid; if Beckman gets a nod from fate, he could drive to NHRA championship No. 17 for Force, which is well within the rules established by the sanctioning body.  

NHRA substitute rules instituted in the pandemic season of 2020 allowed a team to employ a substitute driver for up to eight races in a season to gain points for the injured/ill participant. Force was second in the championship points when he suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] at the NHRA Virginia Nationals on June 23, 2024.

Beckman isn’t the first substitute driver in the nitro ranks since the NHRA’s rule was implemented. Jonnie Lindberg filled in for Covid-afflicted Bob Tasca III, who finished fifth in the 2020 point standings. A year later, Tommy Johnson Jr. subbed for Matt Hagan, another Covid victim, and won the first race of the Countdown. Hagan finished second to Ron Capps in a championship race down to the wire that season. 

“This is such an odd year,” Beckman explained. “During COVID [2021], Tommy Johnson filled in for Matt Hagan for a couple of races. Back in the AHRA days, James Warren filled in for John Wiebe when Jeb Allen and John Wiebe crashed at that Tulsa race. But NHRA’s never had anything like this. Even their COVID policy doesn’t compare to this eight-race ability to have somebody else earn points for you.

“In a week and a half, when I get to Brainerd, I’m going to put on my helmet; that’s the hat I will have on there. That’s where it will start to sink in: we’re eight races with a mission, and that’s to get John’s [NHRA] championship No. 17. And, we have a very realistic shot at that, and it’s a huge weight to carry, and it’s an unbelievable honor.”

There will undoubtedly be controversy circling the sometimes toxic world of social media, citing the unfairness of the situation. Beckman is prepared with a bit of justification for those who demand an asterisk if he’s able to pull off the Force-like feat.

“I’ve thought about that,” Beckman said. “It’s different. You could theoretically put an asterisk next to everybody who won the championship in the Countdown era. You could theoretically put a champ asterisk on every championship from ’64 to ’73 when it was whoever won the last race of the year. There are many people who won exactly one national event in their life in their NHRA tour, and they’re world champions. And I understand that. I’m a purist, and our sport should be handled more like golf.

“You go out there throughout the tournament and you accrue points and they all add up. There have been changes to the point system, there have been changes with this Mission Foods deal, and there have been changes with qualifying bonus points. There’s been a ton of changes there, the Countdown being the most recent and drastic one, and this one is unprecedented and I understand that. 

“Somebody’s going to win the championship this year, and my goal is for that somebody’s name to be John Force. So I would just say people can interpret that through their own lens, and that’s not my responsibility, obligation, or issue to debate that with them.”

As Beckman determined that the unfavorable weather conditions were not what he missed on Saturday in Norwalk, he didn’t have to search far for what he did miss. 

“The fans,” Beckman said without hesitation. “I was a little embarrassed at first. As an elevator guy, I’ve never had a customer want to come up and take their picture or have me sign something because I fixed their elevator. It just hasn’t happened. With the exception of going out to Pomona twice a year and signing a couple of autographs, I don’t do that anymore. That has not been part of my life for almost four years. Then to go back to Norwalk, which is arguably one of the most densely attended drag racing events of the year, Saturday at Norwalk, it wasn’t like, ‘Well, Jack, you’re going to go get your license. It’s a test session. There won’t be anybody in the stands.” 

“It was being thrust under the spotlight and it was magnified going there. At first a little embarrassing, and then it became really humbling and I realized, ‘Man, these are good people that a lot of them, you can tell they’re spending their hard-earned money to come out to the drag strip, and they think all of us are pretty cool.”

“I think all of them are pretty cool, so interacting with the fans was a cool thing. I’ll tell you something else that I didn’t even know I missed until I experienced it again. It’s the camaraderie with the crew. It’s the people going out of their way on the team to make sure I’m as comfortable as I could be. It’s those little jokes in between runs. It’s that fist bump there. I really missed that.”

If Beckman can pull off the unthinkable and win for Force, it will be a full circle moment, reimbursing an iconic drag racer who invested in an unproven nitro rookie some 20 years ago. 

“When I got my first pro ride in 2005 in a Top Fuel dragster, John Force bought me a firesuit with my last name down the legs, just like his team had,” Beckman recalled. “It was just a plain firesuit with no sponsors on it. John Force bought me a safety equipment bag from Simpson. When I got the call and was going to go back there to get fitted, I loaded the stuff that I had that I wanted to use for the fitting in that same Simpson bag 19 years later.

“My connection to the Force Family goes way back, but my connection to John goes back even further. I remember going to Bandimere when I was in the Air Force in 1984, and I’ve got pictures of John Force doing a burnout there. I’ve been a fan of John for 40-plus years. On June 28, 1987, John won his first NHRA national event. It was the day I turned 21. I remember reading about it a week later because that’s how long it took to get results back then and thinking, ‘That’s pretty damn cool.”

“I’ve said through all of John’s trials and tribulations that in my eyes, John Force can do no wrong because I’ve seen all the different sides of John Force. I’ve seen the John Force that goes out of his way to do things for fans and other racers and the organization that he has never taken credit for. If somebody wants to give him credit, he’ll take them off to the side and say, ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want that out of this.” 

“He just wants to make people happy and make things better for the sport. It’s never about him patting his own back. It’s not lost on anybody, including me, that I’m the guy taking John Force’s seat to finish this year. It’s unbelievably awesome, and I hope that I will remember to keep things in perspective. When things get stressful and pressure-packed, remember that I’m the guy who got that call to fill in for somebody who I love, respect, appreciate, and have always looked up to.”