Jack Beckman hopes for luck at Vegas

Jack Beckman isn't looking for a flashback Sunday after championship eliminations of the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals at Las Vegas.

He just wants to see history repeat itself at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway where he won his first professional event title at its fall race in 2006.

"My first win was at Las Vegas in the fall of 2006, and I hope after this weekend I can say my most recent win was in Las Vegas," said Jack, whose Don Schumacher Racing Valvoline MaxLife Dodge Charger R/T has won 14 more Wally trophies after that one and added the NHRA Funny Car world championship 2012.

Jack Beckman

Photo by: Todd Steitle

At the end of the past season, Jack and assistant crew chief Terry Snyder were the only returnees to the team. Veteran crew chief Rob Flynn took over and filled out the roster.

"The expectations for our new team were to look good from the outset and start looking great in a short period of time," Jack said. "I see us headed in that direction. Rob Flynn strikes me as a chess player; he's quiet, studious and digs his nose in the (data) books and goes over run after run. Not just our stuff, but he's been getting some data from our other Schumacher Funny Car teams.

"I see what he's doing. He's educating himself about our cars to be able to make educated decisions at the racetrack. I'm telling you, once this car starts responding in a manner that's predictable to him we're going to be deadly consistent.

"We're not far off right now. Were it not for losing to the low elapsed times of the rounds at the last two events we could have gone deep in eliminations. You don't want to put yourself in a position to rely on luck to win a race, and with the way we're headed we're going to be creating our own luck pretty soon and no better place for that than in Vegas."

DSR