Finally.

After countless opportunities and half the season gone by, Jack Beckman finally returned to the winner’s circle in Funny Car Sunday at the 19th annual K&N Filters Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway, driving the Infinite Hero Dodge Charger R/T to a win over teammate and number one man in points Ron Capps.

It had been 15 races since Beckman’s last win in Funny Car, an eternity for the winningest driver in the class from one year ago. After racing to seven wins and coming up just shy of the championship last season, no one, especially not Beckman, would have ever believed it would be more than half the season before the team would visit victory lane again.

“I thought we had so much momentum last year, and then we go to the Countdown and watch Del (Worsham) win the first two. We come back at Maple Grove and win that one, set the national record, then we haven’t seen a winner’s circle since,” Beckman said. “Even though we had been to three final rounds this year, we really didn’t have our car. We never made it more than 200 feet in any of those prior final rounds and we were struggling.

“We ran well, we set national records this year, we qualified number one four times, but we just couldn’t put it together. We would either run good under the heat and not on the cool track, or great in the hero conditions and couldn’t get it down the track in the heat.

“It’s a little bit frustrating to be the only one of our four (DSR) Funny Cars that hadn’t closed the deal. When Capps is winning every other weekend, (Matt) Hagan has multiple wins, but we knew we would find it. And we did here today.”

In the final, Capps left first in the all-Don Schumacher Racing matchup, but Beckman was able to chase down the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge and race to his first win of the season with a 3.955 at 324.05 mph. Capps, who had won three of the last four races, went up in smoke about 400 feet out and limped across the line with a 4.522 at 194.74 mph in his sixth final of the year.

“With the new Charger bodies, the windshield is much farther back, so we can see out the sides a lot more, which isn’t always a good thing,” Beckman said. “I saw a whole lot of NAPA front fender out there and I thought, ‘oh,’ and before I could get to, ‘no,’ it disappeared. When a car disappears out of your peripheral vision that fast, you know they have smoked the tires and you know that, unless you have a huge problem, there is no way they are getting around you.

“At that point, it is up to me to keep it in the middle lane, don’t hit anything and get the chutes out.”

Beckman, who qualified second Saturday night with a blistering fast lap at over 333 mph, added wins over Robert Hight, Courtney Force and John Hale to collect his 23rd career Wally. In addition, Sunday’s finale marked the 800th race for the Funny Car class, an exciting sidebar to Beckman’s storybook weekend as his crew chief Jimmy Prock celebrated a unique milestone with the win.

“It’s funny, Jimmy Prock won number 500 with Gary Densham driving. Jimmy Prock won number 600 with Robert Hight driving. I won number 700 and we’ve now won number 800,” Beckman said. “It’s a pretty cool deal and the thing that makes it extra special, is it’s the 50th anniversary of Funny Car. So you’ve got a lot of the legends out here, and to have them come by and acknowledge you and cap that off with a trophy, at the end of the day, this is one of those perfect drag race weekends.”

Despite his winless streak, Beckman has remained within striking distance in the NHRA Mello Yello Funny Car standings all season. And with his win on Sunday, he was able to leapfrog up to second in the Countdown to the Championship, just 126 points back of Capps.

And, ironically, he has his own teammates to thank for that shift in performance.

“I will tell you the great thing about DSR teammates. It was my birthday, and Tommy Johnson said, ‘I’ll drive your car.’ They took it out to Indy, they made four hits on it, and the thing never made it past 400 feet. But it started pointing us in the right direction,” Beckman said. “We unwound a problem in the bellhousing with our clutch system, but we couldn’t go back to last year’s notes. We had a pretty good idea for a starting point and when we ran that 3.885 at 333 mph Saturday night, you go, ok, we know this thing can make the hero runs, but what's it going to be like on race day when the track is 30 degrees warmer.

“Then today, the car was darn near flawless out there.”

Beckman will look to string that performance together and make it two-in-a-row when the series heads west for the western swing in two weeks, beginning with the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals in Denver.

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