BAYTOWN, Texas (April 30, 2016) – Rain doesn’t deter avid surfer Jack
Beckman from catching a wave near his Southern California home, but
precipitation is a drag racers worst enemy.
And the former NHRA Funny Car world champion and his Infinite Hero
team led by crew chief Jimmy Prock were not rooting for farmers after
Friday’s overcast and humid opening day of qualifying for the NHRA
SpringNationals near Houston when his Infinite Hero Dodge Charger R/T
lost traction almost at the hit of the throttle.
“We hadn’t been past the Christmas tree on either of our Friday
runs,” said Beckman, whose team won seven time last year and has been
No. 1 qualifier at three of the first five events this season in the
Mello Yello Drag Racing Series.
“That first 200 feet are pretty critical. We needed to at least get
past halftrack, and did we that both times today. We can afford to push
it now.”
Although neither pass in the third and fourth sessions were stellar,
they were major improvements over subpar 7- and 10-second runs at less
than 90 mph on Friday. Beckman recorded 4.192 and 4.123 runs Saturday,
and although he lost traction late in the runs but it was enough to
provide computer data and encouragement for the first round of
eliminations that begin at 11 a.m. (CT).
“We had a very unusual Friday. It kind of painted us into a corner.
The car was spinning the tires early and we made big changes with the
clutch disc package to try to get it to run better. And we were better
on the first run on Saturday, and we were a little better than that on
the second run on Saturday.
The problem is, we’re going into Sunday as
the underdog against the car that’s made several laps quicker than our
best lap. So it really forces you to take an educated guess. We’re going
to have to apply older data with new parts that we don’t have a lot of
experience with and if our calculations come out okay, we’ll be fine.
This isn’t a position this team is used to being in but we’re hopeful
for good results.”
Beckman will face Robert Hight tomorrow for the first round of eliminations.
“We did not want to go into race day (Sunday) with only our two runs
from Friday, and truly no tune-up to take up there and be competitive,”
he said. “We feel like we made some logical changes and it showed on the
racetrack. Now we feel we will be a player on Sunday.
“We have a fast racecar. When the conditions have been right this
year we set the national record (3.879), several track records and were
No. 1 qualifier at three of the first five races. The problem has been
when the track gets warm our car hasn’t been as consistent as it was
last year.”
Championship eliminations are scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. (CT) with
a three-hour program starting at 5 p.m. (ET) on Fox Sports 1 (FS1).
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