• Beckman reaches his sixth semifinal of year at U.S. Nationals
• Brown makes early exit at U.S. Nationals
• Capps upset in U.S. Nationals opening round
• Fuller falls in round one at Indy
• Hagan advances to his sixth semifinal of the season at U.S. Nationals
• McClenathan is runner-up at U.S. Nationals
• Schumacher drops out in semifinals

Beckman posts consistent runs at PBIR testing

01/15/2010

Driving the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Funny Car for Don Schumacher Racing, Jack Beckman completed 11 test runs from Monday through Thursday down the Palm Beach International Raceway 1000-foot dragstrip, posting his quickest pass of 4.095 seconds on Thursday. He also unofficially recorded the fastest Funny Car speed of 308.78 mph.

"It was a very, very productive test," said Beckman, who ended the 2009 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing season with two victories and fifth in points. "We just made a total of 11 runs and three were planned shutoff runs just to test the tune-up for (new crew chief) Rahn Tobler and four new people on the crew. We have five crew guys from last year, four from other teams.

"Of our nine full 1000-foot runs, five of them were really stout. We ran a 4.14, 4.12, 4.11, 4.10 and 4.095. We've run 307 mph and 308.78 mph, almost 309, and those are my two best speeds by quite a bit to 1000 feet."

The Valvoline/MTS team plans to run again today, Friday. "We're going to wait until it gets warm on Friday," added Beckman. "We feel like now we've got a great handle on consistency, and we're relatively quick and we want to see if we can go down a warmer race track.

"As far as testing goes, I try not to imagine too much about it beforehand, because each crew chief has his own plan, sometimes the race track doesn't cooperate, sometimes the weather stinks, sometimes you're sorting parts out. I try not to get a preconceived notion about testing, but this could not have gone better than the way it did out here.

"I believe we're probably the most consistent of the Funny Car bunch and I think we're fastest. I don't think anybody's run a better speed than we did, and we're right there among the quickest. We're within a few thousandths of them. It's been perfect.

"This is exactly what we needed to accomplish. I'll go even one step further: Had Thursday and Friday rained out, I think everybody on this team would have felt confident pulling into Pomona. So, it's just been a bonus to get some more good runs on Thursday and to get another shot on Friday.

"And we've actually been able to try different parts on the car. Sometimes the problem with testing is you have to sort out a tune-up and you don't get a chance to try new ideas and parts on the car. Because everything has gone so smoothly, we've been able to cycle a lot of our test parts onto the car to get data from them."

The first race of the 23-event 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series will be in Pomona, Calif., Feb. 11-14.