"We've come a long way since the first race of the season in February but we're still trying to get over the hump and turn on the win light for the first time," said Beckley, a former NHRA national event winner in Comp Eliminator. "I feel like we're very close. If we can qualify in the top half of the field, that will help our cause because we will have lance choice on race day and that is often a big advantage in Pro Stock. We just need to make our best qualifying run when the air and track conditions are their best, which is usually Friday evening."

The Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., based Mountain View team has plenty of reason for optimism, especially after their engine builder, Allen Johnson, won the most recent NHRA Full Throttle Series event in Topeka, Kan. Johnson was also the No. 2 qualifier in Topeka, behind eventual runner-up Mike Edwards.

"We've known all along that Allen's Dodge engines have the power to get the job done and he proved it again last weekend in Topeka," said team owner Nick Mitsos. "Our Hemi engine makes comparable power to Allen's, but we've been missing a little something in our set-up. We just need to find the right combination and we should be able to have similar results. Route 66 Raceway is a very good race track, especially for Pro Stock cars which means that we should see some very quick elapsed times. We decided to skip last week's race in Topeka so we could be full prepared for Chicago."

Beckley, who will drive in Joliet, and at the upcoming NHRA events in Englishtown, N.J., and Norwalk, Ohio, will soon turn over the controls of the Mountain View Stratus to regular driver Vinnie Deceglie, who has been sidelined this year while he tends to his wife, Linda, who recently underwent a successful liver transplant. Deceglie is tentatively planning to return to competition at the Fram Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., July 24-26.

Courtesy of Mountain View Racing