This season began with a thud for nitro Funny Car driver Jack Beckman when he failed to qualify for the Winternationals.

That seems like a distant memory now.

Beckman ended a 54-race winless drought by winning the Four-Wide Nationals March 29, and he continued to charge ahead Friday.

Beckman grabbed the No. 1 qualifying position at the SpringNationals with a 3.988-second track record time at Royal Purple Raceway in Houston.

“I remember doing this deal at Indy and we hauled butt Saturday night,” said Beckman, the 2012 NHRA nitro Funny Car world champ. “The forecast for Sunday was hot and nasty and there wasn’t going to be any chance of anybody getting around it. Sunday came about and it was overcast and cool and (Matt) Hagan got around us, so I’m not counting this deal until qualifying is over. What I like more than being No. 1 is that three bonus point deal. Right now, we are in 10th place in the points and we are looking at every point as if we were in first or second. I think you can kind of take a little breather and then you recognize the Countdown is where it is important. We are in 10th and we desperately need to move deep into the top 10, and those bonus points are going to make a huge difference. I think if we go two rounds further than a couple of cars with some bonus points, we jump up to sixth place.”

Beckman, who drives the Don Schumacher Racing Infinite Hero Dodge Charger, didn’t believe he was on a three-second lap.

“To me it felt like the car started moving right,” Beckman said. “You don’t want to yank the steering wheel and upset the balance of the tires and you are just trying to nurse the thing back. I’m telling you in three or four tenths of a second it is stunning what goes through your mind. You are like, ‘Please hold on. Please hold on. Please hold on.' It settled and the thing put me back in the trunk and I thought we are going to move way up. I didn’t know it was a three-second run.”

This season, championship tuner Jimmy Prock became Beckman’s crew chief and he is joined by stalwart assistants John Medlen and Chris Cunningham, which isn’t lost on Beckman.

“I think Jimmy Prock’s aggressive (on a track) to a level ahead of most of the other crew chiefs,” Beckman said. “He saw a couple of quick runs out there, the NAPA car shot right up there. The Make-A-Wish car shot right up there. So we knew everything was there for us to run fast, but that doesn’t mean you are going to run fast. You are married to at that point to the blower overdrive, to the clutch weights, and all you can do is a timing curve and clutch flow and timers at that point. Jimmy came back and made an adjustment and it is just so rewarding. Sometimes these cars run slower than you tune them and that’s frustrating and sometimes they run faster than you tune them for and that’s frustrating because you don’t know how to duplicate it, and sometimes everything lines up like that run, and it is just a great feeling that it did what he told it to do. It tells me we are getting into that sweet spot on the tune-up where it is very predictable and you can lean on it more often.”

As thrilled as Beckman was about his performance Friday night, he was able to keep things in perspective based on a trip he made before he even arrived at the track.

“Jeff (Wolf, DSR’s communications manager), and I went to the Texas Children’s Hospital and the pediatric cancer ward,” Beckman said. “One of the kids who was 8 months old had just been diagnosed with Leukemia, and you look at the parent and you are like ‘wow, how do you put yourself in that person’s shoes?’ Ironically that child’s grandfather and uncle were here at the track when I showed up, so I signed a shirt for the grandpa to take to the little kid. You could have gone out (Friday) and have it rain all day or smoke the tires on both runs, and you realize I have two healthy kids at home, how the heck can I complain about anything? That aside, we have a job to do and it is to put that race car down the track and it is to beat the other cars, and that’s important to us and that matters. It just should stay in perspective.”
 

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