![\"Will](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Beckman-burnout-Q2-min.jpg\")
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The 2018 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season marks only the second time 2012 Funny Car champion Jack Beckman has started the year with the same Don Schumacher Racing crew with whom he ended the prior season.<\/p>\n
The first time he carried over his team came from 2011 to 2012 with a Rahn Tobler-led crew, but team owner Don Schumacher decided to make changes about a third of the way through the year and Todd Smith came on to be crew chief for Beckman. By the close of the year, they\u2019d won the playoff Countdown to the Championship and secured the Funny Car title.<\/p>\n
Since winning that singular championship, Beckman\u2019s had a rotating set of crew chiefs and crew members – when Tobler departed, he took the group that currently preps Ron Capps\u2019 Dodge Charger R\/T in the Schumacher camp – until last year, when John Medlen, Dean Antonelli and Neal Strausbaugh settled in to determine the direction of the Infinite Hero car.<\/p>\n
The continuity has been great for Beckman and his team, as they competed in last season\u2019s Countdown to the Championship, starting and finishing the six-race playoffs that determine final standings in fourth place, all the while gyrating through the standings with some good, some so-so results. Still, they stuck together and emerged as a cohesive group.<\/p>\n
But then they had a puzzling official pre-season test as they prepped to meet new header regulations (40 degrees max angle) and rev limiter rules (7900 – same as Top Fuel). Unable to make it down the track with their primary car in seven attempts, the team stayed an extra day, pulled a new car from the trailer, got their clutch disc issue settled and finally got the car to react as they wanted.<\/p>\n
That showed in Pomona at the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals that started the current campaign. Beckman qualified No. 3 for that event and went as far as the semifinals before falling to eventual runner-up Robert Hight of John Force Racing, the reigning and two-time Funny Car titleholder.<\/p>\n
![\"Will](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Beckman-at-the-hit-Q1-min.jpg\")
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Now, at the NHRA Arizona Nationals on the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park dragstrip outside Phoenix, Beckman looks poised for a great season. The team his car owner put together appears to be happy working together, Beckman\u2019s car is fast and reliable and the results, again, are showing.<\/p>\n
In the usual \u201chero\u201d Friday night Phoenix qualifying session, Beckman\u2019s Infinite Hero Dodge Charger R\/T beat all comers with a burst down the 1,000-foot strip of 3.845 seconds at 332.43 mph, beating the identical time from John Force Racing\u2019s Courtney Force, whose speed couldn\u2019t match Beckman\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The chilling temperatures on Friday are expected to continue through the weekend in the Valley of the Sun, and that could provide this Terry and Doug Chandler-supported team with the impetus they need to start mounting a viable championship attempt from their current, yep, fourth position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got one point for being third-quickest of the first session,\u201d Beckman said. \u201cI thought that was great, but then to come back and back that up, we actually tied Courtney for low E.T. and got it on speed. I like the fact that we were able to make back-to-back runs like that,\u201d the three-time Phoenix winner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually, if you have conditions like this you say, \u2018We won\u2019t race in these conditions.\u2019 Those hero runs on Friday night are kind of throwaway of data for crew chiefs because you won\u2019t see those conditions again,\u201d Beckman reminded. \u201cBut I think we\u2019re going to see them [Saturday] and again on race day. What makes me feel confident is we have great data that we\u2019ll probably be able to use again in the next two days.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a student of the sport like Beckman, a man who has taken a career in the military, a bout with cancer and a rotating staff to success in his sport, this kind of enthusiasm doesn\u2019t always come easily. He\u2019s also likely hoping his team owner doesn\u2019t get a bug up his rear and shake up this happy team anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 2018 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season marks only the second time 2012 Funny Car champion Jack Beckman has started the year with the same Don Schumacher Racing crew with whom he ended the prior season.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":49332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399,22],"tags":[5614,574,1258,1819,41,7,1632],"class_list":["post-49330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","category-event-coverage","tag-anne-proffit","tag-don-schumacher-racing","tag-jack-beckman","tag-mello-yello-drag-racing-series","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Beckman-burnout-Q2-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-cPE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49333,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49330\/revisions\/49333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}