"Fast" Jack Beckman and the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services team suffered two setbacks during
qualifying for the 55th annual U.S. Nationals at Raceway Park at Indianapolis, which dropped him to
No. 13.
Outside of the top 12, he will have to re-qualify in Sunday's two final qualifying rounds which
will determine the final 16-car field for Monday's eliminations. His three passes in two days
included a 4.254/274.89, a 4.322/246.39, in which the car suffered fire damage, and a 4.184/296.89.
"On one hand, the fact that we went down the race track and ran decent after burning the car up
real bad validates what the Valvoline/MTS crew gets paid to do," said Beckman, the 2008 U.S.
Nationals Funny Car runner-up. "The Valvoline/MTS guys had a lot of burned and charred stuff. They
put a lot of new pieces in the car and we were able to put a tune-up in it and go down the track in
the last pass.
"The problem is we weren't sure why the motor was breaking the first two runs. Both Q1 and Q2 we
hurt the engines, so we had to take some power out to try to make it down the race track. The
downside of that is we didn't go as quick as we should have gone on that last run.
"But at least now that we've been down the track, the motor looks good. We can look at the data and
we can pump it up for tomorrow. But, I think the good sessions are gone. Now we might be racing for
the 13th spot. But, heck, we've won from the bottom of the field, so we can do that. Period."
