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NATIONAL HOT ROD ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 5, 2015Jack BeckmanSCOTT SMITH: Thank you for taking time out of your busy day. As you've said a lot of times, you're more than just a racer, you're a family person. Thanks for joining us today. JACK BECKMAN: It's my pleasure. Yeah, the circumstances couldn't be better, so you're not going to hear me complain. SCOTT SMITH: We are joined by Jack Beckman, driver of the Infinite Hero Dodge Charger. Jack won his fifth Funny Car event at the NHRA Sonoma Nationals when he defeated his teammate Tommy Johnson, Jr. in the final. It was also his second consecutive Funny Car win, and he is poised to sweep the famed Western Swing if he is victorious at the NHRA Northwest Nationals coming up this weekend. Only seven drivers in NHRA history have swept all three of these events, and John Force is the only Funny Car driver to do so coming back in 1994. The most recent driver to sweep all three events was Antron Brown in 2009 in Top Fuel. During the course of the weekend Beckman also lowered the national elapsed time record with a run of 3.921 seconds. Jack, the weekend as a whole, you obviously won a championship, but is that one of your best weekends at a racetrack in a long time? JACK BECKMAN: Yeah, it's a great question because I think your latest win always tends to be the one you look at with the most rosy colored lenses. I think the reality is there are some average wins, there are some that nothing really stands out about. All five of mine this year have had some significance. Charlotte broke a 55-race winless streak. We were the only three-second car with low ET in the final round. Topeka we lowered the boom. That might have been my finest weekend in a racecar. Five three-second runs. Unprecedented at Topeka. Norwalk, 4th of July weekend for the Infinite Hero group. Beat three Force cars. Then Denver, had to pedal it first round, and then beat John Force in the final. In terms of overall performance and dominance, I never have had a weekend like Sonoma. SCOTT SMITH: Talk about the Western Swing. You've won two, you have one more to go. You're a definite historian of the sport. Not a lot of drivers have done that. What is your game plan going into Seattle or is it just business as normal for your team? JACK BECKMAN: It has to be business as usual. You know, the agony of defeat, that Olympic reel they used to run, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I think when you're good at something, you're probably good at it for two reasons: you have a passion and you practice. I have a passion for drag racing and I practice. And when you do something in your mind 10's of thousands of times, you have a mental zone that you perform best in. When you change that because suddenly you tell yourself, This time it's really, really important, you don't have that 10,000 repetitions to fall back on anymore, you change something. So I think it has to be business at usual. SCOTT SMITH: We'll take questions for Jack. Q. Jack, the Western Swing with the elevation, your three different elevations, three different tracks, it's such a hard thing to sweep. I know you're a California guy, so it might not apply to you. Most of the teams being East Coast based, how much does geography contribute to this being a difficult stretch, time zones, being 3,000 miles away, et cetera, et cetera? JACK BECKMAN: I'm glad that you said that because it makes a huge difference. Last year we had two four in a rows. Not only is three in a row not unprecedented anymore, we do it quite often, but we've done more than that. You think that might have taken some of the luster off the Western Swing. What's always made the Western Swing special is just what you said, the differences in geography and the mileages between the races. You go to Denver where you're 6,000 feet up in the air, you go to Sonoma where you're down at sea level, then you go to Seattle where you have all these oxygen-bearing trees around the racetrack. They're three fairly unique conditions. Because they're back-to-back-to-back, you have to pack all the parts you need before you leave Indianapolis. And because it's such a different requirement for Denver in terms of compression ratio, pistons, things like that, you're packing different styles of parts. Then you race, you make eight runs. If you have a good weekend, you make eight runs. We did that in Denver and then again in Sonoma. Then Monday they have to do the basic service they can get caught up on, tear everything down, load it back up, head to the next race, which is either 1100 miles or 700 miles, unload it, finish all the servicing, load it back up, then come back the next day unload it and start qualifying again. I wish you guys could see them set up and tear down at the races. It's a bigger spectacle than the race sometimes. It's so much work on the crew guys and they get so little credit for it. To leave with the trophy on Sunday, that's all they wanted. Q. Obviously you come here once a year, but the resurgence with your crew chief, after you won in 2012, how frustrating were those two years, and the resurgence with your crew chief, the year you're having, how pleased are you? JACK BECKMAN: Sure, I mean, I never thought during the winless streak in 2013 and 2014 that I necessarily deserved to win. I never felt like I was in a situation where I needed to feel sorry for myself. But sometimes I felt sorry for myself. It was very frustrating. To be successful and then to go that long without winning, sometimes you wonder if it's going to happen again. Then when it was announced that Jimmy Prock was coming over, I was beyond ecstatic. He was actually on our car the last two races of last year and we didn't win a round. Then we went and tested in Florida, unloaded at Pomona, then didn't qualify. But I wasn't frustrated then. I'm not changing history. If you interviewed me Sunday at Pamona, you would know what I'm telling you is factual. I kept my chin up, this is a small hiccup, we're going to be fine. I didn't know that we were going to be this fine. Q. Jack, everybody is pretty jazzed about the TV deal starting in 2016. That live element to the equation kind of raises concerns about safety with those short turnaround times. How much does that concern you and what can the NHRA and the teams do to ensure that the drivers and fans are going to be safe? JACK BECKMAN: I think that you guys have a lot to do with that. I think that you can ask leading questions to know that. Recognize it's not the live TV that necessarily encroaches on our ability to bring a good racecar to the starting line, it's the shortened turnaround. The bigger question is how do we do live TV and still maintain an acceptable turnaround. Now, Sonoma wasn't live, but the turnaround between the semis and the final was absolutely grueling. We were thrashing to get our car together. The Make a Wish car got to the staging lanes after ours, and they had run before us in the semis. So our crew did an amazing job of getting it back up there. But let me tell you, I was standing up there in my fire suit with Pro Stock bikes in the water box, Pro Stock cars behind them, looking in the staging lanes wondering where my racecar was. I think live TV will be an absolute boon for our sport. This might be a renaissance of sorts for drag racing. We just need to ensure that that turnaround between the semis and final round is adequate to get two well-maintained, well-serviced racecars up there and give the fans in the stands the show they paid for. Q. I've been wondering for a long time, do you think NHRA should institute some sort of a certification program for mechanics? It seems unregulated. You have no problem with Don Schumacher Racing, John Force Racing, and a handful of other people are pretty sound when it comes to the quality of their mechanics. But some people have volunteer crews. There's nothing wrong with that as long as they're capable and knowledgeable. Should NHRA go to some sort of a certification process? JACK BECKMAN: Even though it sounds like on paper a good idea, the logistics of that would be insurmountable. The reality is there's a big difference between somebody who can tell you what a 9/16ths wrench is versus a 7/16ths wrench is. (Indiscernible) comes back to the pits and has control cables, ignition systems, knows how to dive in there and work well under stress. (Indiscernible) certification assessment process. I think the way it's worked over the years where most of these guys get an education on a sportsman's car, then come into the big leagues on a lower-funded team (indiscernible) onto a better-funded team, assistant crew chief, finally crew chief. I don't think we need AFC badges on their shoulders because I think our crew members are much more than mechanics, they're counselors, therapists, so many things they do in a weekend that you couldn't quantify on paper. But that's a great point. Q. Jack, what's the biggest thing you've learned this year from the new crew chief that you have? JACK BECKMAN: I'll tell you the biggest pleasant surprise is what a wonderful, deep person Jimmy Prock is. The Jimmy Prock you see on TV, very businesslike, very focused, very concentrated. You just don't get to see his sense of humor. I'll tie some other stuff in. Along that same line with John Medlen, I always knew he was a rock and he was just an exceptional human being. But I've seen in even larger breadths in that man. Chris Cunningham, he came on midway last year, for whatever reason last year we just struggled. I tell you, I think Rob Flynn is one of the finest crew chiefs out there. I don't know why we struggled. We couldn't get the results. We couldn't get it with Rob Flynn, Chris Cunningham, Todd Okahara or with Jimmy Prock. To see Chris blossom in the assistant crew chief role, I hope he gets some recognition that he deserves, because he does have a hand in it. I spent a lot of time in that crew chief's lounge with a lot of the best crew chiefs in the sport, listening to them, watching them, trying to kind of figure out what their philosophy and thought process is to make a car go down the racetrack. Jimmy Prock is a different individual. He looks at things slightly different. He is a mad scientist that is just absolutely in a different universe in terms of the things that he's not afraid to try on these cars. It's the boldness of his moves. When you go out there at Sonoma, seven out of eight times you're low ET, I don't know if you average it out, we were probably low ET by 5 or 6/100ths on average throughout the course of that weekend. That's just utter domination. That is somebody in the crew chief position performing at their prime. Q. In addition, given all of the seasons that you've had to date, is this the number one season that you've ever had? JACK BECKMAN: Let me think about that for a second. Yes. I'm not saying that to be a smart ass. Without a question, I've been so fortunate. Let's back up for a second. If you're a phenomenal little league baseball player, then you go through junior high and high school and college and get into the majors, you're output really can be directly correlated to your input and innate talent in that sport. Drag racing is different. There's not really a farm league for drag racing. You guys are going to say there's junior dragsters and sportsman classes. The reality in our sport is somebody can circumvent that with money. You literally could have never sat in a race vehicle and start racing in Nitro Funny Car if you have the budget to do it. You don't have to go through that training and learning process though I think it's hugely beneficial. For me, I did go through all of that. I went through all that because I didn't have the finances or the last name to go into the big leagues, and I never thought I would get into the big leagues. I always dreamed of it. A lot of people say, You must have always known this would happen. Absolutely not. I always wished for it, but sometimes that dream was just a little beyond my fingertips. Then Rodger and Karen Comstock in 2005 provided the funding to get me into the Top Fuel dragster for half the year. I'm telling you, just the fact that I get to do this for a living, it blows me away. I hope can I articulate this well enough that you can understand I'm so, so fortunate to get to do this. Now when you start adding on all these wins and holding the national record, having won a championship, looking the way we're looking, driving Jimmy Prock's car this year, it's more than I ever, ever, ever could have asked for. So my position right now, yes, it's the finest year I've ever had. But I want to keep levelheaded and try to make it one of the finest years any Funny Car driver has ever had. Q. Jack, getting back to Chris Cunningham. He doesn't get as much credit as Jimmy and John do, obviously, because he hasn't had quite that much publicity over time. What does Chris essentially bring to this team? I know between the three of them, it's definitely a team. JACK BECKMAN: Yeah, the way it's set up, if you walk in our trailer, right when you walk in the doors on ground level, John Medlen has his area set up with the computer screens. He's right near the racks, rods and pistons. He's just inside the door from the Funny Car. You walk upstairs into the crew chief's area, Chris Cunningham and Jimmy Prock have their computer layouts there. John Medlen's hearing is very poor. John has a bunch of things he does, comes up into the crew chief's lounge, gives his feedback and opinions. All the while and after that, Chris and Jimmy I are looking at their different things on the computer. There's too many data points for one set of eyes to look at. You may have one guy that looks at clutch parameters on the run, which would be like clutch slippage, drive shaft, rpm, things like that, another guy might look at motor parameter, exhaust gas temperature, engine rpm. The one guy is going to get the engine tune-up ready to go, the other guy is going to offer his feedback on the clutch tune-up to go in the car. After several minutes of doing this, they put their heads together, make the call to the crew on what's going back into the bell housing, what head gaskets and compression ratio to put in the thing. What Chris brings is a solid sounding board for Jimmy, and a wealth of knowledge to offer his opinion if it does differ from what Jimmy has suggested. That's what I love. There's no point in paying an assistant crew chief if all they ever do is say, Yes, yes, yes, that's what I'd do. You want somebody to say, Why are you doing that? What if we do it this way? It brings a slightly different perspective to the whole tune-up process that makes all three of our crew chiefs better. Q. Jack, I want to ask you about the run itself. Did it feel any different than the prior runs you had done at Sonoma that weekend? I know it was the fastest ever, quickest, I should say. What was your sensation in the car as you were going down that track? JACK BECKMAN: Well, it was only our second run. We had run 398 the run before, but it was in the other lane. A lot of times switching lanes, the car will feel slightly different. A lot of times switching lanes you think the car feels different but it doesn't only because the center line, the wall and the Christmas tree are flip-flopped, your perspective is a little different. It was a later run, so it was darker, which can make it feel different. I'll tell you, the reality is I was so focused on trying to keep that thing in the groove because it was (indiscernible). When they're accelerating that hard, a lot of times the front end can get light and the steering doesn't feel the same. It's not quite the same response. It's a little bit like getting out of a sports car and into a pickup truck, or vice versa. It just doesn't feel the same. I was so, so intensely focused on managing that car in the center of the lane that I lost a lot of sensation of the acceleration. I almost regret that I didn't get to enjoy how fast that car was accelerating. Then when I went by the finish line, I glanced up and I saw 392. I thought, That ain't possible, I must have seen it wrong. Then Medlen comes on the radio and says 392. The entire time in the shutdown area, because it takes 30 seconds for us to coast down and turn off the track, I couldn't wrap my head around it. It never sank in that we ran a 392. No, something has to be wrong there. It wasn't wrong. If you look at the numbers, it all adds up. Q. And you took it. JACK BECKMAN: I took it. By God, it's in the record book now. Q. I'm proud what you're doing for the Infinite Hero program, too. This must be a boost for them. JACK BECKMAN: We do these military style challenge coins. I typically take 15 in the car every run. I just had a feeling at Sonoma maybe we were going to have a higher demand for them. I took 25 on a couple of the runs. We sold over 100 coins that weekend, best weekend we have ever had. $10,000 to help out the injured veterans. That's when you know you are making a difference. Gosh, pretty soon we're going to pass the $100,000 mark this year just for the coins. That doesn't include online donations and people that just donate cash and don't want the coin. I've seen that money changing lives. It's so gratifying. You want to win races, but you also want to make a difference, and I think we've done both. In more ways than you guys know, first and foremost -- let me just say first, I still have a job. I didn't know if I was going to have a job last year. Again, I'm not saying this to be coy. I thought I'd be back fixing elevators. Terry Chandler saved my career by stepping up and paying every expense to fund this car under the Infinite Hero banner. To track what Infinite Heroes have given to every program and watch them change the veterans' lives has been phenomenal. Third, to have the success we've had on the racetrack so far this year, again, it's beyond what I could have expected. Q. Jack, did you see the picture of you and your buddy Lee West from the Atlanta race in the latest issue? JACK BECKMAN: Let me give the rest of you guys some background. When I was in the Air Force, I went in 1984 and got out in 1988. I was just as big a drag race fan as I was back then. In 1986, my buddy and I drove out to Dallas, 500 miles one way, to see the inaugural Dallas, Texas Nationals. It was one of the most phenomenal races that NHRA has ever had. It was that guy's first drag race he had ever been to. That was Lee West. When I got out in 1988, I lost touch with Lee. I've been trying to find him for the last 15 years. There's 150 Lee Wests on Facebook. Could never find him. Finally he watched an ESPN broadcast last year and he said, I'd always heard Jack Beckman and I thought it was a coincidence. He said, Then I saw your face on there. The Atlanta race was the first time in 27 years I had seen Lee. It was just so neat to come full circle. I was 21 years old last time I saw him. I'm 49 now. We're grown men, but we're still little kids when it comes to drag racing. Q. I took your picture in Atlanta. We ran it in the magazine. It's in the current issue of Drag Illustrated. We're making Lee a little more famous. You don't need the help, right? JACK BECKMAN: Yeah. I will send him a copy of that. I'm sure he'll love that. I'm going to try to get him out to the next Charlotte with a couple of my other Air Force buddies. It's interesting, because drag racing is not a normal life. You travel so much, spend so much time away from home, you kind of give up that social aspect of a normal life. However, the other side is drag racing has enabled me to meet my wife, meet my children's godparents, reunite with some of my Air Force friends that I wouldn't have seen if I was staying home or not going on vacation. It's been very fulfilling in many different ways. Q. I know it's great to win some races, set some records, all that kind of thing. Is it not even more important that you guys are building momentum at the right time? You're getting into just a couple more races before the Countdown starts? That's almost more important than the actual winning right now, isn't it? JACK BECKMAN: Well, here is my thought on that. Past performance is no guarantee of future success. Nitro racing and the stock market share that slogan. I don't know. A lot of times you think, boy, these guys are getting hot at the right time, then we run out of one clutch disc in our clutch pack combo, you have to cycle in a new one, the tune-up just goes to crap. A lot of times the opposite happens. A team cycles in a clutch just right before the Countdown and all of a sudden they're brilliant and consistent every run. But directly to your point, I have to agree with you. It appears that we have made the right decisions, put ourselves in the position that our car is predictable. Once the car is predictable, it's much, much easier to step on it and make it quick, then you can go out there and win rounds. Maybe the other factor is, Mike (indiscernible) said this on the ESPN broadcast, with the way our car was running, he said, This is a game changer. This is going to force the other crew chiefs to step outside their comfort zone. Now whether that makes them run better and makes things tougher on us, I don't know. But it might backfire. A lot of times when you try to pick up 5/100ths of a second in a car, you blow the tires off. I'm comfortable with the fact that our car is probably the intimidator right now. Q. Can you contrast this year heading towards the Countdown with your championship season of 2012 I think it was. JACK BECKMAN: Yeah, that was a much, much different deal. I would have to say that was a Cinderella story. Four or five races in, Don made some major changes. Basically Ron Capps and I just switched trailers. I took my body with me, he took his NAPA body with him. He got my car and my crew. I got what was left much his crew, minus two people. We had to hire a crew chief. We found a guy that was a good Top Fuel crew chief, but didn't tune Funny Cars. Then Todd Smith takes us to the world championship. That's something that will never be duplicated in my career. I don't think anybody expected us to do what we did. It was absolute magic. But a very different feel than this year where you bring in an established crew chief, Jimmy Prock, but now he's got to adapt to some of the DSR tune-up parts and things that we manufacture in-house. But it was a given that he was going to figure that out pretty soon. I just didn't know he was going to be this dominant with it in the middle of the season. SCOTT SMITH: Thank you very much, Jack. I think that will conclude the conference call for today. Thank you very much for your time. We will see you when we get to the NHRA Northwest Nationals this weekend. I'm sure we'll all anticipate watching qualifying and eliminations and see if you have a shot at adding another chapter to your career. JACK BECKMAN: I can't wait to get on the airplane tomorrow, rack up some more frequent flyer miles. Thank you everybody. I appreciate your time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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