St. Louis: Jack Beckman final report

BECKMAN TOSSED OUT BY FORCE IN ST. LOUIS FIRST ROUND MADISON, Ill. (May 3, 2009) - Despite his loss to No. 8 qualifier John Force in the first round of Funny Car eliminations today at the NHRA Midwest Nationals, Jack Beckman (who qualified No. 9) ...

BECKMAN TOSSED OUT BY FORCE IN ST. LOUIS FIRST ROUND

MADISON, Ill. (May 3, 2009) - Despite his loss to No. 8 qualifier John Force in the first round of Funny Car eliminations today at the NHRA Midwest Nationals, Jack Beckman (who qualified No. 9) maintained his lead over the 14-time champion in head-to-head round wins, 7-5, and is now tied in fourth place in the rankings with Ashley Force Hood.

When the pair launched at the starting line, Beckman, in the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge, took the lead at 60 feet, but struck the tires soon after to post a losing 4.918-second elapsed time at 179.04 mph to Force's winning 4.186/296.37

"That's Force's birthday present," said Beckman, with a laugh, referring to Force's celebrating his 60th birthday on Monday. "He ain't getting any more and mine's next month.

"It stinks. He kind of left the door open for us. An average run would have won that race. But, it's not like we're off 50 percent on the tune-up. You miss it by two percent without lane choice. We saw that the left lane was not dishing up a whole lot of win lights.

"We need to qualify a little bit better, and having two qualifying runs here probably hurt us more than some of the cars, because we were trying some things.

"But, you know what, that's fine. We got a Wally last race in Atlanta. We'll just go get the Wally at the next race."

Next up is the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol (Tenn.) Dragway, May 15-17.