After scoring his highest qualifying position of the season, No. 3, at the 25th annual NHRA
Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, outside of Reading, Pa., "Fast" Jack Beckman exited early in the
Funny Car opening round.
Facing off against his former Don Schumacher Racing teammate Jerry Toliver, Beckman launched first
with a .099 reaction time (.000 is perfect) to Toliver's .132, and was in the lead until a loss of
traction slowed him to a 4.662-second pass at 204.08 mph. Toliver claimed the victory with a
4.327/258.27.
The driver of the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge slipped to fifth place in the point
standings (by virtue of Bob Tasca's win today), with one event remaining before the Countdown to 1
playoffs kick in following the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis on Labor Day weekend.
"Here's where the championship teams are going to keep their chins up, start looking forward,
maintain that positive attitude," said Beckman, a two-time winner this year. "We're going to go
test Wednesday at Indy. The next race is at Indy. We won the sixth race, we won the 12th race;
we're on par to win Indy and the Pomona, Calif., finals," he added with a smile.
"It was very disappointing to lose, especially as well as we had qualified. It got sunny, hot and
gooey out there and with two qualifying runs in totally different conditions you could see that
almost every nitro car first round had some difficulties, except for the ones who ran way toward
the back and obviously were able to make the correct adjustments for that.
"It's frustrating and we never like to lose. But, at the end of the day, what's going to help us
win is analyzing the data, figuring out how to be better and going to Indy and getting the Wally
there."
Next up is the 55th annual U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, Sept. 4-7, 2009.
Today's racing action experienced a four-hour-plus delay while the NHRA Safety Safari cleaned up
the water that was seeping through the track surface.
