Jack beckman

Forgotten, like everyone, when Gary Stinnett cracked the 600-point mark this summer, Jack Beckman won 13 consecutive rounds over the last two events of the year to score an unlikely, come-from-behind first national championship.

Beckman, a driving instructor at Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School and lifelong fan who still runs to the stands when the fuel cars race, outdrove a field of nearly 200 at the last and annually the biggest divisional event of the season, the Division 7 closer in Las Vegas. He was barely in the top 10 when he let go of the button in the first round, but eight rounds later, he was headed to NHRA's season closer, the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals, ranked second in points.

In Pomona, site of both of Beckman's national event victories (1998 and 2003 Winternationals), the pressure, obviously, was on. On the last weekend of the long season, after the title in every other class in drag racing had been clinched, a championship was still a possibility - an unlikely one given that the ladder dictates that 15 of every 16 drivers are gone after the fourth round, but a possibility. Anything less than a fifth-round appearance and somebody else - probably Stinnett - would be champ.

But it wasn't just Stinnett's once seemingly unattainable total of 638 points that Beckman had to worry about. Anthony Castillo (by far the best divisional driver this year), Steve Williams, and Milton Gedo hadn't been mathematically eliminated, either.

Riding an eight-round winning streak and competing at the same track where he makes his living teaching people how to drive Super Comp dragsters, Beckman survived the first round, as did Gedo, Castillo, and Stinnett, who was there only to block. Williams did not.

Castillo went by the wayside a round later, and it was down to Gedo, who had to win the race to win the championship, Stinnett, and Beckman. In the pivotal third round, Gedo fell to Hans Schiebe, Stinnett lost to defending event winner Kyle Rizzoli, and Beckman could and probably should have lost to Florida's Steven Hunt, who Tree'd him, .009 to .049.

"The championship was over when we left the starting line," Beckman said. "That should have been it right there. I started thinking up there and couldn't get my finger off the button. Sometimes you think too much and it overrides what you naturally know to do. I thought, 'Damn, damn, damn,' when we left the line, and then it was, 'Forget that. What am I going to do when we get down there?' Hunt was so far ahead, there was only one thing I could do: push him and hope he broke out, and he did."

So it all came down to the fourth round - one run for the Super Comp championship.

"Obviously, it wasn't just another round of racing, but I tried to tell myself it was," Beckman said. "I thought about something Frank taught me: The only person who can put pressure on you is you. In this class, the fastest car doesn't always win, and it's amazing how much more your win light comes on if you go up there thinking you're good enough to win and not doubting yourself."

Driving his winged, canopied Blackbird dragster, designed after childhood hero Don Garlits' innovative 1986 car, Beckman ensured that he'd be in it at the end with a .016 reaction time. Bill Smith, another of his hundreds of former students, was on time, too, with an .018, both ran 8.87s, and the math went Beckman's way, 8.877 to Smith's 8.872.

"I was five-thousandths from watching Gary Stinnett go up onstage," Beckman said. Needing to go five rounds, he went six and eclipsed Stinnett, who looked on from the stands, by 14 points.

"Some guys say let the points take care of themselves, but [2001-2003 Stock champ] Kevin Helms says it doesn't matter how you get them, as long as you average 80 a race," said Beckman, who sure didn't do it the easy way. It isn't every national champion who has second-round-loser points for a quarter of his claimed races.

In five races from March, when he reached the semifinals at the Tucson divisional, until August, when he won at Sacramento, Beckman didn't get out of the second round. By contrast, Stinnett earned the vast majority of his points over a six-race span, compiling a 30-4 win-loss record and never waiving a race.

For Beckman, the turning point came Aug. 17 in Sacramento, Calif., where he was joined by friend and co-worker Thomas Bayer (who also led the national standings this year) and others in a between-rounds converter and transmission swap. In the first two rounds after the thrash, Beckman ran back-to-back 8.90s, and he eventually won the event title. "You're never going to win if you don't have four things worked out: the car, motor, converter, and tires," said Beckman, who runs a CCE slip-joint chassis, Vrbancic Brothers engine, B&M converter, and Mickey Thompson tires.

To be number one of the more than 1,400 drivers who raced this season in Super Comp, Beckman started and finished strong. He reached three finals and won them all: the season opener in Pomona and the Division 7 meets in Sacramento and Las Vegas.

After seizing the national title in front of all of his friends with his fourth-round squeaker over Smith, Beckman returned to find "Jack Beckman: 2003 Super Comp national champion" T-shirts waiting and a banner across his trailer. Castillo came by to offer his congratulations, and more than 100 former students sought him out, making his pit area a mob scene. A scripted weekend was made complete when racer Rodger Comstock had Beckman's father flown in for Sunday's eliminations and delivered him from the airport to the track as a surprise for Super Comp's new national champion. [bug]

Beckman's 2003 track record
652 points

K&N Filters Winternationals: Won event
Checker Schuck's Kragen NHRA Nationals: Fifth round
Southwestern Int'l Raceway (Div. 7): Semifinals
Famoso Raceway (Div. 7): Second round
Woodburn Dragstrip (Div. 6): Second round
Sacramento Raceway Park (Div. 7): Won event
The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (Div. 7): Won event
Automobile Club of Southern California Finals: Sixth round