The Jimmy Prock-led team with assistants John Medlen and Chris Cunningham posted a 3.859-second pass to earn lane choice when they face Dave Richards in Monday's opening round.
"We unload and 'Wow!' 3.859, one-thousandth off the track record and one-thousandth from the pole position," Beckman said of his first qualifying pass of the weekend.
"We get the new track record in speed, and then we struggled a little bit.
"In Indy, we get five qualifying shots here so our last one is a representation of what we can see tomorrow. And tomorrow, it's going to be a completely different day," Beckman said.
"We have run late all three days that we've made qualifying runs and now we're going to come out and make our first run in the morning for the first time of the entire event."
The run of show of the U.S. Nationals is unique to the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing series because it is the only race to consist of three days of qualifying. Teams get five chances to take on the track to gain as much information as possible as they prepare for the biggest day of the session.
"Track conditions should be good for first round. We're No. 2 but we have to try to protect lane choice and we need to be aggressive.
"At the end of the day, we want to be standing there holding our second consecutive Indy trophy. There's a ton of big hitters standing in our way. We can do it."
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