"Twenty-four races are important to us," said Beckman, the 2012 Funny Car world champion. "There's never a race weekend you go into and you say, 'well, we'll experiment, we'll throw this race away, it doesn't matter if we do good.' You want to win every weekend."
Unfortunately, the Infinite Hero team will have to wait two weeks for the NHRA Nationals at Brainerd to try and win their third title of the season.
"Earlier in the year we won two races before we had reached our prime. Really, we just kind of wore everybody out there and had a few lucky breaks. Lately, our car has become much more consistent and we're well on the road to where we want it to be and we've had a litany of parts breakage. So, we've lost a lot of rounds with stuff breaking on the car.
"Seattle 2017 is going to go down as the race where our championship form showed up. I don't think I did a good enough job driving against Courtney (Force) in the second round. I think I let the car move over too much and that might've been what did us in."
Beckman faced former Top Fuel and Funny Car Champion Del Worsham in the opening round on Sunday's race day. Beckman clocked a lap of 3.926 seconds at 325.69 mph to get the win.
During the second round, Beckman went into tire smoke midtrack as Courtney Force of John Force Racing drove around him.
"We've cured our parts breakage and the car is doing what we tell it to do every time. That smoke in the second round is on me, that's not on the crew chiefs.
"I cannot wait for the rest of the season, we're peaking at the perfect time, we're doing everything right for the soldiers with the Infinite Hero fundraisers and we're going to make Mopar proud at the end of the year."
The team will return to Don Schumacher Racing's home base in Brownsburg, Ind., near Indianapolis, after three weeks on the road for the Western Swing.
JACK BECKMAN, Terry Chandler's Infinite Hero Foundation 2017 Dodge Charger R/T
Crew chiefs: Dean Antonelli, John Medlen, Neal Strausbaugh
SUNDAY CHAMPIONSHIP ELIMINATIONS
First round: BECKMAN (3.926 sec., 325.69 mph) def. Del Worsham (4.033, 319.52)
Second round: Courtney Force (3.959, 317.27) def. BECKMAN (4.037, 287.66)
QUALIFYING RESULTS
Qualified: No. 5
FRIDAY: 4.133 sec., 301.87 mph, (first session); 3.983, 322.88, (second session)
SATURDAY: 4.466, 191.87, (third session); 3.943, 323.35, (fourth session)
SEATTLE BY THE NUMBERS
Last event (July 30), Sonoma, Calif.: Qualified No. 3, lost in semifinals to J.R. Todd
A year ago at Seattle: Qualified No. 4, lost in second round to Matt Hagan
Career at Seattle: Wins 2 (2007, 2015); Runner-ups 1 (2011); Poles 2 (2013, 2015)
2017 NHRA MELLO YELLO DRAG RACING SERIES FUNNY CAR STANDINGS
(Official after Seattle; 16 of 24 events: wins in parenthesis; DSR drivers in CAPS)
1. RON CAPPS (6) 1,330 -----
2. MATT HAGAN (3) 1,172 -158
3. Robert Hight (2) 1,164 -166
4. JACK BECKMAN (2) 1,104 -226
5. TOMMY JOHNSON JR. (1) 1,081 -249
6. Courtney Force 951 -249
7. John Force (1) 877 -453
8. Tim Wilkerson 759 -571
9. J.R. Todd (1) 756 -574
10. Cruz Pedregon 601 -729
About Don Schumacher Racing
Don Schumacher Racing, headquartered in Brownsburg, Ind., fields seven professional NHRA teams. In Top Fuel, the U.S. Army dragster driven by eight-time world champion Tony Schumacher, the Matco Tools dragster driven by three-time world champion Antron Brown and the Papa John's Pizza/Mopar Top Fuel dragster driven by Leah Pritchett; and in Funny Car, 2016 world champion Ron Capps in the NAPA AUTO PARTS Dodge Charger R/T; 2011 and 2014 world champion Matt Hagan in the 80th anniversary Mopar/ Express Lane Dodge Charger R/T, and 2012 NHRA world champion Jack Beckman in the Infinite Hero Foundation Dodge and the Make-A-Wish Dodge driven by Tommy Johnson Jr., both of which are funded by the late Terry Chandler.
DSR has won 313 NHRA national event titles and 16 world championships.
Follow Don Schumacher Racing at ShoeRacing.com, on Twitter at @shoeracing and Facebook.com/shoeracing.
