There’s no question Jack Beckman had huge shoes to fill as the fill-in driver for the legendary John Force.
Beckman, who won the 2012 Funny Car championship, on July 30 was named as the replacement driver for John Force to finish out the season. Force continues to recover from a traumatic brain injury he suffered in a June 23 racing crash near Richmond, Va. Beckman drove the final eight races of the 2024 NHRA season for Force, winning twice.
Beckman’s latest win came at the season finale, the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals, on Sunday in Pomona, Calif.
Beckman, driving a JFR Camaro, clocked a 3.812-second time at 327.35 mph to defeat his JFR teammate and 2024 nitro Funny Car champion Austin Prock, who slowed to 5.028 seconds.
“If I didn’t like driving so much, I’d retire right now. It doesn’t get any higher than this,” Beckman said. “I won here at the 2019 Finals, at the 2020 Winternationals and I haven’t raced at Pomona since then. So, look, when at Pomona, you get double the shots of anywhere else. I raced Super Comp here for 20-something years and was fortunate enough to win it twice. It’s just magical at your home track. It’s special when it’s the Winternationals. When the Winternationals was the first race of the year, it’s still going to be special next year if I get to suit up for that event. But the Finals are the Finals, right? Whoever wins here gets a couple months to say, ‘We were the baddest on race day.’”
By NHRA rules, when a driver is unable to compete, the race team may employ a substitute who can earn points for the original driver in a maximum of eight events. That meant that when Beckman rolled to the starting line for qualifying in Brainerd, Minn., on Aug. 16, he was continuing Force’s pursuit of a 17th title.
And, thanks to his performance filling in, Beckman helped Force finish second in the points standings, 166 behind Prock
wasn’t complaining about the lack of attention being paid to him.
“They’ve hardly talked to me this weekend. This weekend’s about Austin. That’s the story,” Beckman said. And I said, ‘I’m cool with that.’ It’s okay. Sometimes you kind of slide under the radar. No, there wasn’t any animosity or jealousy or whatnot. Now I remembered days that’s like,
there for the finals against one of his daughters, he’d always walk over and give me a thumbs up and that felt cool. Because it was Babe Ruth telling you, ‘Do a good job, kid.’ When he did it today, he did it as my boss and it’s just different.
“Having him come back to the sport in person at Las Vegas was unbelievable. It just kind of really changed the complexity of stuff. Didn’t make us want to win more. We want to win every time we go out there. It made winning that much more special. And to see Brittany win after a two-year winless drought the day — or the weekend — her dad comes back and then Austin double up with her was just great.”
Following Prock and Beckman in the final points standings were Ron Capps, Matt Hagan, and Bob Tasca III.
