THE DSR-1 REPORT CARD
Two races into the roll out process, Jack Beckman is ready to give the DSR-1 chassis a passing grade. Beckman tested the chassis in Martin, Mich., before heading to the NHRA Supernationals in Englishtown, N.J., where he introduced the car to competition.
“We made four half-track passes and a few shorter runs to make sure nothing fell off,” Beckman said of the initial test session. “Anytime you put new pipe on even if it’s a carbon copy of the last car there will be differences just in the stiffness of the new pipe. We like it. It’s responsive; it’s responsive to the driver and so far it seems to respond to the tuners changes. Now that being said there’s an infinite amount of variables out on the race track and the only way they’re going to find out what it wants is to make runs at different tracks in different conditions.”
If you don’t want to wait in line for a new chassis, you simply create your own. Essentially this is why Don Schumacher Racing took the path towards developing an in-house chassis based on the Murf McKinney Funny Car chassis.
Two races into the roll out process, Jack Beckman is ready to give the DSR-1 chassis a passing grade. Beckman tested the chassis in Martin, Mich., before heading to the NHRA Supernationals in Englishtown, N.J., where he introduced the car to competition.
“We made four half-track passes and a few shorter runs to make sure nothing fell off,” Beckman said of the initial test session. “Anytime you put new pipe on even if it’s a carbon copy of the last car there will be differences just in the stiffness of the new pipe. We like it. It’s responsive; it’s responsive to the driver and so far it seems to respond to the tuners changes. Now that being said there’s an infinite amount of variables out on the race track and the only way they’re going to find out what it wants is to make runs at different tracks in different conditions.”
The test session provided enough encouragement and the Englishtown outing served as a confirmation for their confidence. The new chassis went a 4.890 elapsed time at 317 mph on the first pass.
“One of the biggest motivations for us to do this in-house was to circumvent the long waiting lines,” Beckman said. “You can wait up to eight months for a Murf car; which if you’re Murf that’s a good thing. But if you want to get a new car out there, whether it is because the NHRA’s rules change by Denver or if your car is getting a lot of runs on it, it now gives us the ability to build a car on our timetable. So we don’t have to worry about a car getting unpredictable from getting too many runs on it.”
Beckman’s car is a pure Murf clone and despite the ability to implement qualities from the Brad Hadman design being utilized by fellow DSR driver Gary Scelzi, they’ve stuck to the one path. The DSR-1 is a slip-tube chassis while the Hadman is a rigid chassis configuration.
“Both have there advantages; slip-tube cars apparently take some horsepower to torque the chassis,” Beckman explained. “So in a perfect world the Hadman might be a tick quicker. The problem with the stiff car is they have a hard time keeping the front end on the ground. As a crew chief, that’s not a big deal. As a driver, that could be a huge deal. If they’re going straight and the front end comes up it’s okay but when they get light and start moving from side to side it’s impossible to keep them under control.
“I think it’s a trade off either way. Right now we’re liking what the DSR-1 chassis is showing us; we like that resiliency of having the slip tube. But [Scelzi crew chief] Todd Okuhara has really seen a couple of things out of that Hadman stiff chassis that he thinks might be the way to go.
"It’s very possible you might see a hybrid come from us in the short future.”
