Renowned tuner Lee Beard confirmed to CompetitionPlus.com he will be back as a consultant for Cruz Pedregon’s NHRA nitro Funny Car team in 2023.
“They presented me with a really good package, made it really easy for me,” Beard said. “I don’t have to go to the shop; I can fly into the races. I work really well with (crew chief) John Collins; I have a lot of respect for him.
Beard has nothing to prove in the NHRA ranks but now wants to pay back the sport that gave him so much.
“I’m also doing this with Cruz because I’m doing everything I can to give back to the sport that was so good to me. Everything I have and the life that I live today was because of NHRA drag racing. My way of giving back is to work with and pass my knowledge and philosophies on to these younger guys. I enjoy seeing guys that used to work with me go on to become successful crew chiefs. I like John Collins and Ryan Elliott, and I am sharing everything with them to make them the best.”
Beard tuned the late Gary Ormsby to a Top Fuel title in 1989. In 1992 he won a world championship as team manager for Larry Minor Racing when Cruz Pedregon captured the nitro Funny Car title. He also was the team manager at Don Schumacher Racing when Tony Schumacher was the Top Fuel champ in 2009.
As a crew chief, Beard has amassed 55 NHRA national event wins with 14 different drivers in Top Fuel and Funny Car. Seven of those drivers were first-time national event winners.
Late last season, Beard was back in the nitro game after he received a phone call from Pedregon.
“At the end of the season last year, he called me up and said, listen, things just aren’t going the way that I think they should be going,” Beard said. “We’ve been racing with this combination now, ever since he hired the entire, what was the Make-A-Wish team (with Tommy Johnson Jr. from Don Schumacher Racing). That combination was based on a five-disc clutch, and it wasn’t a super powerful motor because of the fact that you just can’t run a lot of power with the five-disc clutch.”
Beard acknowledged the combination was effective for the team. “That combination worked well for them,” Beard said. “They had won a lot of races with Tommy when they were at Schumachers, and they won races with Cruz, but like anything in racing, technology changes and pretty soon, we’ll say your competitive combination, somebody comes up with something that supersedes it and runs a little quicker and faster. “Even though it was a great combination, they had a lot of success with it; it was my opinion that they just stuck with it a little bit too long. Cruz asked me if I would come in as a consultant and work with the team and try to develop a better combination that was a little bit more competitive and would run a little quicker ETs and faster speeds.”
Beard accepted Pedregron’s invitation and attended the St. Louis national event Sept. 15-18.
“Really, I was just an observer there, learning their equipment, learning the team, certainly learning John Collins and (his crew) and just bonding and getting a feel for how they thought and what they were doing,” Beard said. “I think when St. Louis was over, everybody was in agreement that we needed to take the last three races, which was Dallas, Vegas, and Pomona, and use those races to really establish a competitive combination for 2023.”
With that in mind, the team already knew its initial step.
“We all agreed, the first thing we needed to do was put a six-disc clutch in there, and we did that in Dallas,” Beard said. “John Collins actually had a little bit of six-disc clutch experience; they had one in TJ’s car for a little while and took it back out. They had, we’re going to say, a starting point, and we used that and ran in Dallas, and it definitely was a better clutch application, but it certainly needed a lot more power to be able to compete with the top three or four guys out there. Then we put our heads together, and we discussed a lot of different ways to try to make more horsepower, and we came up with a concept, and we went to Las Vegas with that.”
The Vegas race didn’t go as planned, as Pedregon qualified No. 13 and lost in the first round to JR Todd.
However, those results were deceiving.
“We kind of struggled during qualifying and first round with it smoking the tires because it had considerably more power than what they were used to running,” Beard said. “We stayed Monday (Oct. 31) after Vegas, tested, and we zeroed right in on it; on the combination on Monday, it went 3.88 at only 302 miles an hour. Cruz had shut it off early. We learned what we needed to learn on the early part of the course. Then, of course, when we rolled that new combination of higher horsepower, six-disc clutch out in Pomona, it ran 3.84 four times in a row during qualifying. It was No. 1 three out of the four sessions. (Ron) Capps got around us in the final session with the 3.83.
“Then, race day we really didn’t change it, we all agreed that we’re going to do whatever we have to do to win, and so Cruz was comfortable with me putting it in a little bit deeper and it went like 3.86, 3.87 through first, second, and third round. Had those had been light-stage runs, it would’ve been right in that 3.84 zone again. We were really pleased with the combination because not only was it quick and getting fast, but it was consistent, which is what you really need to have in today’s arena to be able to win rounds and win races. The final round, we did put a little bit more power in it, and it went a 3.83 deep stage.”
Following Pedregon’s victory at the season’s final race in Pomona, Beard wasn’t planning to return.
“So, after the race and during the offseason, Cruz and I talked quite a bit; I actually flew back there and met with the team,” Beard said. “It is a situation where we came up with a great game plan and came together at the last race, and everybody was in agreement that we should do everything we can do to try to keep this group of people, the mindset of everybody, together and try to give Cruz a real spectacular 2023 season.”
Beard was trying to find a balance for a return to Pedregon.
“I really didn’t have a lot of desire to be going to all of the races,” Beard said. “I’m pretty comfortable in my life, living up there in the Breckenridge (Colo.) area. I ski and fly fish and live the ski resort town lifestyle. With all of the concerts and festivals and stuff. I’m 69 years old; I’m going to be 70 in July. They presented me with a really good package.”
Beard praised the work of crew chief Collins.
“He’s very methodical about his thought processes, real detail-oriented, and he doesn’t like to change a lot of stuff, especially when something’s working good for him,” Beard said. “The combination of the two of us has really turned out to be great. If things are going really well and we’re not going to be doing, let’s say, future development, we’re going to race the combination for a while. I don’t think I need to be at every race. John Collins, he’s the crew chief; he’s the one that makes the decisions about the compression ratio, what head gasket thickness, how fast he’s going to run the blower, how much weight on the clutch, the clutch application, everything. He’s the guy who makes those decisions. I’m the guy that helped him develop a winning combination.”
Beard said Pedregon’s team will make its first laps of 2023 in testing at Gainesville, Fla., March 6-8, just prior to the season-opening race at the Gatornationals March 9-12 at the same track.
“In looking at what it takes in today’s arena to win a championship, having a really solid backup car is very important,” Beard said. “We are going to run our backup car probably on Monday and Tuesday and make sure that everything on it, all the systems, work fine and everything, and then put it away and then run our car that we ran at Pomona with the exact same combination in it, and just get it adapted to the Gainesville track and be ready for the race. We have great depth in the current combination that we have. We are developing some new stuff.”
Beard said the initial foray back into consulting with Pedregon in 2022 was a shock to his system.
“I’ll be honest with you, when I got to the races, especially St. Louis, the very first race that I went to with (Pedregon) as a team, I was in awe of how the arena had changed, and how competitive those cars are,” he said. “It really set me back; I wasn’t quite ready for it. There were a few moments when I thought, ‘Man, I’m kind of over my head here. This is a whole different ballgame from when I raced.’”
Beard initially retired from the NHRA in October of 2013 but then went to work with Rapisarda Racing in Australia not long after.
“I went to 11 races with them and won seven of them and won a championship there,” Beard said. “But, of course, nothing against the Australian teams, but they just aren’t at the competitive level that the U.S. teams are at. Again, like I said, when I left the racetrack after the St. Louis race, I questioned myself about being competitive in this arena that these young guys have developed. A lot of it comes from NHRA’s prep of the racetrack. The tracks are so tight that it takes a lot of power, and a lot of clutch, to really take advantage of the grip that’s available out there.”
On the flight back from St. Louis, Beard had somewhat of an epiphany.
“I’m on the airplane flying home, and it kind of woke up my competitive spirit,” Beard said. “I wasn’t going to go back and get my butt kicked and have people look at me and say, ‘Hey, old man, you should have stayed on the mountain and stuck with fly fishing and snow skiing; this is a little bit over your head.’ I was not going to allow that to happen. I put together a very aggressive program that really two races, Dallas and Las Vegas; we developed a combination, and we’re able to win the third race of me being there.
“I think it surprised a lot of people. It didn’t surprise myself and the team because we felt everything was within our grasp as long as we could use those races as testing rather than being under the pressure of racing. Every qualifying session, every round of Dallas and Las Vegas, were test sessions for us. It really all came together.”
Beard also believes Pedregon’s Funny Car can go even quicker than what it showed in Pomona.
“I think the combination we have could run maybe 380 flat, but we need a combination that can run in the 3.70s if we’re going to go out there and be the leaders, and that’s what we’re working on,” Beard said.
