Jack Beckman knows his drag racing history, right down to the drivers, cars and tracks where records were established. Getting him to recognize his own place in that history isn’t nearly as easy.
Saturday at the NHRA Las Vegas Nationals, Beckman found himself leading the first all-three-second Funny Car qualifying field in NHRA history, a milestone the category had been chasing for years.
Beckman drove his PEAK Chevrolet to a 3.836-second pass at 335.32 mph, earning his fifth No. 1 qualifying position of the season. All 16 qualifiers ran under four seconds, with Jeff Diehl anchoring the field at 3.968 seconds.
And Beckman, being Beckman, was more interested in what happened to someone who didn’t make the show.
“Because I’m still a fan of the sport and I was rooting in the staging lanes, Q3,” Beckman said. “I really wanted to see Rupert go in the threes.”
Jason Rupert delivered, only to get bumped when qualifying was complete. Running in the threes was no longer good enough to guarantee a starting position.
“And he did it and then eventually got bumped out,” Beckman said. “But it is a milestone drag race.”
Funny Car’s first all-six-second field came at the 1971 U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, just one year after the category’s first six-second run. Henry Harrison’s Mickey Thompson Mustang occupied the final qualifying position with a 6.88-second elapsed time.
Twelve years later, Kenny Bernstein’s Budweiser Mercury LN7 led the first all-five-second field at the 1983 U.S. Nationals. Dean Skuza followed in 2001, leading the first all-four-second field at Firebird Raceway outside Phoenix.
Getting everybody into the threes took another 25 years, a stretch that included NHRA’s switch from quarter-mile racing to 1,000 feet in 2008 following Scott Kalitta’s fatal accident.
Beckman nearly witnessed the milestone from the No. 1 position at Indianapolis in 2019. Justin Schriefer’s 4.002-second bump spot left the field two thousandths of a second short.
There was another historical connection involving Matt Hagan, then Beckman’s former Don Schumacher Racing teammate. Hagan’s 3.995-second pass at Charlotte in 2011 was the first three-second Funny Car elapsed time displayed on an NHRA scoreboard, something Beckman had once reminded him wasn’t necessarily the same as being the first to accomplish the feat.
“It’s the first that came up on the scoreboard,” Beckman said.
Now Beckman had a first of his own, although he wasn’t about to use it to reopen an old argument with Hagan.
“Well, I’m not going to go p*** Hagan off,” Beckman said. “I’ll let you break the news to him.”
He joked that he could outrun Hagan back then, but when it came to discussing his own accomplishment, Beckman preferred talking about the crew chiefs and the people responsible for making the car run.
“I always think number one qualifiers are for the crew chief and the crew, because that’s their reward for, you guys did everything right,” Beckman said. “I just didn’t mess it up out there.”
Beckman had plenty to appreciate about his team’s performance. His Chevrolet was one of only two Funny Cars to run in the threes during all four qualifying sessions, and he collected 19 of a possible 20 bonus points.
Beckman missed a perfect 20 qualifying bonus points by just .001 of a second in the opening session. He still collected enough points to move from fifth to fourth in the championship standings without making a single elimination run.
“Now these number one qualifiers mean the world because it’s the points that go with it that, listen, we went from fifth to fourth during qualifying just based on qualifying bonus points,” Beckman said. “If we can keep picking this away and I’m looking at the distance to second to third, we’ve closed it up a whole round based on being number one qualifier in low of those sessions.”
The consistency came despite track temperatures ranging from approximately 74 degrees Friday night to 104 degrees during qualifying. Passing clouds Saturday added another variable, occasionally changing the track temperature by eight degrees while crews prepared their cars.
Beckman understood how much those fluctuations complicated the decisions facing the tuners.
“You can literally watch their eyes and watch the blood pressure go up when the clouds go away and then they come back in,” Beckman said.
For Beckman, the Chevrolet’s ability to make repeated competitive runs was encouraging heading into eliminations. The team had already shown it could produce low elapsed times on race day, not just when qualifying points were available.
“It’s an absolute pleasure to drive this car and it almost spoils you,” Beckman said.
Beckman knows better than to take a nitro Funny Car for granted, regardless of how well it has performed.
“You always have to be on your toes and say, ‘It’s still a nitro Funny Car. You got to be ready to catch it if something goes wrong,'” Beckman said.
Beckman has spent years keeping track of drag racing’s firsts, often recalling details others have long forgotten. This time, when someone looks back at the first all-three-second Funny Car field, his name will be the first one on the qualifying sheet.
“So I guess that’d be cool because, okay, you know what? Great question. Yes,” Beckman said. “Because, at some point, Phil’s going to have an article on this. It’s going to say, ‘First this, first this, first this, first all three-second field, Jack Beckman, Jeff Diehl.’ It’s neat to be a footnote to history. Yeah. I geek out on that stuff. You know that.”
