Following his runner-up finish in Ennis, Texas, last Sunday, Beckman moved to third in the Countdown to 1 playoffs standings and the team continues to demonstrate its prowess of stepping up when it counts.

He recorded his quickest lap of 4.101 seconds at 306.46 mph in Friday's evening session, for which he earned two bonus points for the second quickest pass of the round. That was preceded by a 4.206/296.76 (No. 11) earlier that day, and today's first run produced a 5.877/120.60. He remained in No. 2 and then set a 4.744/175.18 in his final try.

"We unloaded with a decent run," he said. "By making it down the track on Q1, we could afford to lean on it for Q2, and the result was second best of the session and second lowest of qualifying, which is our highest of the year. Outstanding.

"Now that the NHRA is implementing these bonus points and the standard qualifying points, we need so start gobbling up a bunch of them. Today we went out and smoked the tires twice. We were able to put a different blower and injector on to make sure that we have two equal pieces.

"It wasn't a testing thing. It was to make sure that we have a good spare of everything down the stretch. So, I don't think that we really showed our potential today on the two tire-smoking runs. I think we've got enough tune-up info to go back to it for first round tomorrow.

"This is exciting. This is the position we have to put ourselves in, where we go into race day as one of the favorites. We've always known we have that capability and potential and we just haven't showed it in qualifying this year. This might be that corner that we're turning right now, where for the rest of the year we can be a top-four car in qualifying and get lane choice for first round."

Beckman faces Jeff Arend in the opening stanza of Sunday's eliminations.

Courtesy of Judy Stropus