NHRA Funny Car driver Jack Beckman’s weekend started off well at the Northwest Nationals. Not only was he the first driver to break the sub-4 second mark for 1000 feet in a Funny Car at Pacific Raceways on Friday with a 3.997-second pass, but he followed it up by besting his record from Sonoma on Saturday.
After a twenty-five minute rain delay (surprise, surprise—it IS a suburb of Seattle here), Beckman laid down this 322 mph, 3.912 second pass. This was faster than his previous record set last weekend, where a 3.921 second pass gave him the fastest elapsed time for an NHRA Funny Car anywhere, ever.
“It’s just a wonderful feeling,” Beckman told The Seattle Times. “When you are a kid, you dream of these moments of greatness. I knew when Jimmy Prock came on board this was possible, but I didn’t even think it could be this good. It’s just mind-numbing.”
While this was the quickest individual run in Funny Car history, Beckman was unable to certify it as the new official record with another pass during the weekend. According to Autoweek, he would have had to make another run within one percent of the 3.912 second time (3.951 seconds or quicker) sometime during the weekend for it to count.
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