Driving the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Funny Car for Don Schumacher Racing, Jack Beckman completed 11 test runs from Monday through Thursday down the Palm Beach International Raceway 1000-foot dragstrip, posting his quickest pass of 4.095 seconds on Thursday. He also unofficially recorded the fastest Funny Car speed of 308.78 mph.
"It was a very, very productive test," said Beckman, who ended the 2009 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing season with two victories and fifth in points. "We just made a total of 11 runs and three were planned shutoff runs just to test the tune-up for (new crew chief) Rahn Tobler and four new people on the crew. We have five crew guys from last year, four from other teams.
"Of our nine full 1000-foot runs, five of them were really stout. We ran a 4.14, 4.12, 4.11, 4.10 and 4.095. We've run 307 mph and 308.78 mph, almost 309, and those are my two best speeds by quite a bit to 1000 feet."