Since replacing the injured John Force in the cockpit last August, Jack Beckman has proved he’s still one of the best nitro Funny Car drivers in the world.
He proved it again Sunday.
“Fast Jack” powered the Peak Chevrolet SS to the title at the Gerber Collision and Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals presented by Peak on Sunday in the Chicago suburb of Joliet, Ill. He scored the victory by defeating JFR teammate Austin Prock in the finals at Route 66 Raceway.
Beckman clocked a 3.935-second elapsed time at 325.77 mph to edge Prock’s quicker 3.933-second time at 329.02 mph.
The difference in Beckman’s win came at the starting line. He had a .049-second reaction time compared to Prock’s .063, which allowed Beckman to win by approximately six feet.
“So, every win’s great, right? I have a lot of trophies that I never thought I would have, and there’s not a single one I’ve looked at said, ‘Well, that one wasn’t a big deal,’ but some of them are bigger deals than others – your first one, winning Indy, winning on my home track in Pomona – but winning in Chicago where it was a track that was off the tour, and we thought we’d never come back here. And I was off the tour for four years and the last time I drove here was in 2019, never thinking I would race this track again.
“I came back here last year as a spectator, sat in the stands all the way down to the … Up high on the right-hand grandstands and had a wonderful time. Never would I have thought a year later I’d be talking to you in the winner’s circle and it’s the corporate headquarters for Peak. And to get to spend time with them on Wednesday, to meet the owner Tom Hurvis of Old World Industries, to have 623 employees on the hood of our car this weekend, the planets just lined up. This is as good a race win as I’ve ever had in my career.”
Beckman, the 2012 NHRA Funny Car champion during his stint with Don Schumacher Racing, has now won 37 Wallys in nitro Funny Car action. This was his second win of the season to go with his Lucas Oil Winternationals triumph at Pomona, Calif., on March 30.
“The interesting thing is we have an air hose on our helmet with pressurized air. … And as soon as we started the car (in the finals), I lowered my visor, the air hose blew off the helmet. So, I said, ‘Hey, Mark, the air hose blew off,’ hoping maybe he can reach in and put it back on there. He’s like, ‘Okay.’ I open my visor back up, burn out, back up, roll up, they hold me there, motioning me to pull forward to stage. Flip my visor down, I don’t have any fresh air in it. And because I had a good light, we happened to win on a holeshot, they said, ‘We’ll just disconnect it. Every one from here on out there.’”
Beckman also knew beating Prock, the reigning NHRA nitro Funny Car world champ, off the line was no easy feat.
“The crew chiefs will have to look at that (the holeshot). Austin always stayed honest,” Beckman said. “Austin is the class of the field when it comes to reaction times. There’s none of us who can touch him. He is a hundredth or two hundredth better consistently than every one of us. And I had to remind myself, ‘I’m not a bad Funny Car driver,’ but I had to remind myself I have to go up and do my best, not try to match Austin. It worked out well.
“Listen, I’m good. Austin is great and he’s great every time he steps on the throttle. And the fact is I try never to change my approach. People will tell you they dig deep to find that extra gear there. I don’t know. I try the best I can every time. That run everything seemed to work out just right for us.”
This wasn’t a fairy-tale weekend, however, as Beckman acknowledged. His team overcame more than its share of adversity.
“So, the car didn’t start for Q4, and we found a broken air fitting. That’s a smoking gun. We found it. And I made a guarantee on camera, ‘That won’t happen again.’ And then we’d go to fire it up this morning and it won’t start. And we’ve got stale gas in one of our timing deals. How do we fix that? That won’t happen again,” Beckman said.
“We are going to fire it up for the semifinals, it won’t start. … I have three crew chiefs, Chris Cunningham, Danny Hood, and Tim Fabrisi. Chris and Danny, real low-key guys, don’t get excited about much. Tim’s a Marine, and Tim’s the guy who is the car guy, right? Chris and Danny spend the bulk of their time making tuning decisions. Tim is the one who is in and out of the trailer touching the car. And he is in and out of the trailer shoving people out of the way. We put an MSD grid box on there and it starts up.”
Beckman clocked a 3.859-second elapsed time at 332.75 mph to snare the No. 1 qualifying spot. He then ousted Dave Richards, Chad Green, and Cruz Pedregon before clipping Prock in the finals.
“It’s like three different times this weekend. Once, I get. Twice would be unusual. Three times I’ve never heard of it. And then to go out there E1 and run second-low ET of the round and go, ‘Okay, we’re back,’” Beckman said. “And we go out there second round and Chad Green leaves a day early. I step on the throttle. As soon as our car squatted and touched the wheelie bar, it smoked the tires. It didn’t go six inches. And we know that this racetrack is green in as much as it only gets one race a year on it, but when you miss it that badly and you’ve got to drag it back up for the semis against a worthy opponent, Cruz Pedregon, you can’t back it down too much. So, we go out there against Cruz and it launches and starts driving okay, and then rips the tires right off. Pedaled the thing, it settled down and made it down the track and we turn on the win light. Great.”
That set up the battle with Prock, who came into the weekend with two race wins on the season.
“Now we’re going up against the Prock titans up there, and they laid down a great run in the final. But drag racing’s an interesting sport. You don’t necessarily have to be good. You have to be good enough. We were great when we needed to be, and we were good enough when we needed to be,” Beckman said.
Beckman was named as the replacement driver for John Force on July 30, 2024. Force continues to recover from a traumatic brain injury he suffered in a crash a little more than a month earlier near Richmond, Va.
Beckman competed in eight races a year ago, won twice and finished second in the standings. And he continues to take full advantage of the second chance he was given by JFR.
“That’s a great question and that’s a fair question,” said Beckman how he would have reacted back in the day to this weekend’s adversity. “And I would like to think that I’ve never been a helmet thrower … so I’d like to think I’m more on an even keel about this. But I am absolutely more appreciative of this second chance that I’ve been given. I think the same can be said about going through some pretty serious cancer and surviving that.
“I can still be a jerk on a lot of days. … I think I got a little better perspective on things. And it’s great when things don’t go well. I sat in the car for the semis while they were trying for 10 minutes to start this thing up and they’re disconnecting wires and all that. And I just thought to myself, ‘I have no control over this. My job is to be ready when they’re ready to start the car up.’”
Beckman thought the semis would be more of an emotional roller-coaster ride, but he clocked a 4.257-second time to defeat Pedregon, who lost traction and came across the finish line in 7.005 seconds.
“Danny and Chris and especially Tim Fabrisi just dug in, figured it out, fixed it. I suited up in the pits. We hauled butt up to the staging lanes and we still got here before Cruz did,” Beckman said. “We were worried they were going to be pushing us into the water box as soon as we rolled up. But as a driver, your job is just clear everything out and go out there and do your job. And it worked out well.”
Towards the end of his postrace interview Beckman once again emphasized how big of a moment this was to win a race at the home of the team’s primary sponsor.
“Tom Hurvis owns Old World Industries. I hadn’t met him until we went out there on Wednesday and did the company meet and greet with all the employees,” Beckman said. “And one of the things he told me that really stuck with me, he said ‘People don’t quit Old World Industries. We provide a work environment where people want to stick around.’ And Force was with us, and Tom said, ‘Tell me something about John in one word.’ And it was hard, I thought. I said, ‘Well, one-of-a-kind with hyphens, does that count as one word?’ He says, ‘No.’
“And what we landed on was ‘passionate,’ and Tom Hurvis and John Force are very similar in that they’re incredibly passionate about what they do. And all 623 of the Old World Industry employees were on the hood of the car. Couple hundred showed up this weekend, and loved the fact that they could take a picture of their name on the hood of our car.”
Beckman also knew the world of nitro drag racing is unpredictable, which made Sunday’s outcome even more special.
“Did we know we were going to win the race? You never know that, but we persevered,” he said. “When it looked like we were really struggling, (we) might be out of the game, we found a way to get it done. And that makes it all the more satisfying. Winning at your home track, your first win, winning at Indy. I don’t know how you select what’s the best win. But winning at a track that was off the tour with a driver who was off the tour, with your sponsor’s headquarters and all their employees on the hood and a couple hundred of them out here, that’s as good as it gets.”
