NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Five races into the 2026 Mission Foods Drag Racing seasion, Jack Beckman, a perennial contender for the Funny Car title, finds himself mired in eighth place in the standings, and has just three round wins to show for it. The statistics are what they are, but Beckman isn’t the least bit worried as his PEAK team continues to plug away.

“I guess if you had to sum it up in a word, it's underachievement, and some of it is self-inflicted and some of it you’d have to describe as bad luck,” said Beckman. “I don’t want to make excuses because excuses don’t win rounds, and they don’t win races.

“In Gainesville, we had a wonderful test session. We made 13 runs and ran so good Tuesday, that we kept the car in the trailer Wednesday. Then, we got a completely different racetrack and just got behind the eight ball. Finally, we lost the best first round match there was. In Phoenix, I was driving to low E.T. of the weekend but the pan pressure sensor had had enough, and it shut the car off. In Charlotte, we were .015-second from taking the trophy. It goes on and on.”

Given the various factors that have come into play for the first five events of the season, Beckman honestly doesn’t feel that he’s in a horrible spot, sitting in eighth place heading into the sixth event at Route 66 Raceway. He fully understands that the last six events of the year are far more important than the first six.

“I'm just painting a picture here, but if somebody said, what would you have done differently? The answer is not much,” Beckman said. “If I could have changed anything in Charlotte, instead of being eighth in the points going in, I would have preferred to be a ninth, because it would have given us the right lane in Q1. We were in the Mission Foods [2Fast2Tasty challenge] and Matt Hagan put us in the left lane and we didn’t get down. That was a tough pill to swallow.”

Mechanically, Beckman acknowledged that his crew, let by Tim Fabrisi and Danny Hood, made a few changs in the interest of maintaining consistency among all trhee John Force Racing Funny Cars. 

“We took one step back to go forward and what we tried to do was run bigger speed on this car,” Beckman said. “That necessitated some fuel system changes, and that took a few runs to sort out. We would go out there and burn a piston, and the next run drop a cylinder.  I think, basically, our shots have gotten closer to the bull's eye on that because you can't run consistently quick until you can run consistent. That’s taken us a few more runs to adjust to.”

If nothing else, Beckman is highly encouraged by the performance of his teammates. Jordan Vandergriff claimed his first career win in just his fifth start in the Cornwell Tools car while Alexis DeJoria has been to a final and added a semifinal in her first season with the team.

“Jordan's is a very confident young man, and some people struggle when they go from a Top Fuel dragster to a Funny Car or vice versa, but when you look at what he’s accomplished so far, you go ‘Yeah, he’s got it.’ Jordan's bright. He listens and he processes information. I’ve offered my assistance, but I really haven’t had to do much.”

Beckman’s 39 career wins have come at 18 different NHRA facilities including Route 66 Raceway where he defeated former teammate Austin Prock in last year’s final round. Beckman also won the 2016 event over Ron Capps.

“We’ve had success here in the past and there is no reason to think we can’t to the same thing again this year,” Beckman said. “The bottom line is that this team is better than it has shown so far this year and I think it’s only a matter of time before we see the results we’ve been looking for.”