Odds are pretty good that “Fast Jack” Beckman won’t win the Mission Foods Funny Car Championship this weekend in his final race as surrogate for John Force at the wheel of the PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant Chevrolet Camaro SS.
Barring the alien abduction of runaway Funny Car point leader Austin Prock, Beckman will be racing to maintain second place in the driver standings during Sunday’s season-ending 59th In-N-Out Burger Finals at In-N-Out Pomona Dragstrip.
Nevertheless, even though his bid for a third World Championship to go with those he won in 2003 (Super Comp) and 2012 (Funny Car) likely will fall short, the 34-time pro tour winner won’t lack for motivation.
“The last time I (raced) in the NHRA Finals at Pomona, I left with the trophy,” Beckman said of his 2019 victory in a Don Schumacher Racing Funny Car, “and this being my final fill-in race for John, nothing would make me happier than to put his PEAK Camaro in the winners’ circle.”
Should he achieve that goal, the 58-year-old Californian would assure a 1-2 Funny Car finish for John Force Racing. That would be the team’s seventh sweep of the top two positions in the modern era but its first since Robert Hight and Ashley Force Hood went 1-2 in 2009.
Beckman, who had been out of the sport for almost four years when he got the call following Force’s crash, not only won his last start at Pomona, in reality he won his last two, having beaten the man for whom he now is driving in the final round of the Winternationals during the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
For 11 years a full-time instructor at Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School where he taught Force’s wife and daughters to drive, Beckman has won at Pomona in four different decades in two different classes.
He won in Super Comp at the 1998 and 2003 Winternationals before losing to Force in the money round at the 2006 Finals after earlier qualifying No. 1 and setting NHRA national records for both time and speed.
“I want to express my gratitude to John and the Force family,” Beckman said, “to Robert Hight, the entire PEAK crew and JFR staff and especially the NHRA fans for making this eight-race stretch so memorable and rewarding.”
In the seven races he’s driven the PEAK Chevy, the world’s quickest and fastest elevator repairman has one win (at St. Louis), one runner-up (to Prock at Reading, Pa.), has qualified no worse than sixth, has posted a 14-6 elimination record and has moved the idled Force from sixth place, the position in which he started the Countdown, to second, the position he’s occupied after the last three tour events.
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59th In-N-Out Burger Finals SCHEDULE
Friday, Nov. 15
Nitro qualifying, 2 and 4:30 p.m., PST.
Saturday, Nov. 16
Nitro qualifying, 12:30 and 3 p.m., PST
Sunday, Nov. 17
First round eliminations, 11 a.m., PST
JFR ON FS1
Sunday, Oct. 13
Qualifying show, 10 a.m.-12 noon, EST
Eliminations, 4-7 p.m., EST
JFR PR
