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NATIONAL HOT ROD ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEApril 29, 2015Jack BeckmanSCOTT SMITH: We're joined by Jack Beckman, driving of the Infinite Hero Dodge Charger Funny Car. The 2012 Funny Car world champion and is rebounding from probably, as he would say, a disappointing 2014 season. Beckman has one win this season and raced to his second final round appearance at the most recent event in Houston. Charlotte ended a 54-race drought from the winner's circle. He has veteran crew chief tuner Jimmy Prock. Jack, first of all, thank you for joining us today. JACK BECKMAN: It is my pleasure. SCOTT SMITH: Talk about Jimmy Prock, him joining the team. Are you on the same page now as we're a handful of races into the season? JACK BECKMAN: Can I put it this way? Whatever Jimmy says, I'll do. You said, Talk about Jimmy Prock. I don't even think he's the guy whose name precedes him, whose accomplishments go before him. When I heard he was coming over to my car the last two races of last year, I didn't believe it. I didn't know what his plans were going to be for 2015. Don could put him on any of the teams. I was grateful that not only did he stay on my team, but John Medlen came over, we kept Chris Cunningham. I've changed a lot of things I do to suit Jimmy, burnout routines and a couple other things. I've talked about this a couple times with media folks. Sometimes it's easier for the crew chiefs to change their routine about the driver, sometimes it's the other way around. The reality is we probably both changed our approaches a little bit. For instance, just the burnout. When we went to Palm Beach, we did 15 test runs. It took us six to get the burnout rpm correct. The difference was the way John and I pressed the throttle pedal down on the burnout. Jimmy had to adjust the car to suit me. Backing up from the burnout, him and Medlen had some preferences for the way they like the clutch movement to be, and it was pretty easy for me to adapt to that. SCOTT SMITH: We'll open it up for questions. Q. A thought about the next guy coming up made a comment about getting that second championship is harder than the first. Talk a little bit about that. You got yours in 2012. You've struggled a bit since that championship. Talk about getting the next one. JACK BECKMAN: That was my second championship. Q. Sorry. JACK BECKMAN: That's okay. There is a distinction with a difference. I get it. Sportsman championships don't get the same press coverage that pro championships get. Let me tell you, they're every bit as hard to earn but in different ways. A sportsman championship tends to favor the driver because most people have the financial access to build a 'competitive car.' A professional championship really revolves around the equipment maybe more so than the driver and a crew chief and things like that, so it's all about having the funding and not having things go wrong. Yeah, I won it in 2012. Everybody said we had a really disappointing 2013. Well, we really didn't. We went to three final rounds. Same crew as 2012. Todd Smith calling the shots. We finished third in the points. I wouldn't by any metric consider that a disappointing year. It's just that when you come off winning a championship, maybe anything but another championship is disappointing. 2014 the wheels fell off. Incredibly frustrating year, very disappointing. Never finished outside of the top five. Didn't finish within the top 10. Never won a race. That's the first time since I started racing -- well, I don't know if I won a race in '88. But from '89 on, I'd won at least one race every year in my sportsman car. In 2013 I wouldn't the Traxxas Shootout. 2014 was the first time in 25 years that I did not win a single race. I can't put my finger on one specific thing that was the reason for our lack of success. We certainly tried just as hard. I thought we had just as much talent onboard. Things just didn't go our way. We started off this year with a DNQ in Pomona. But I wasn't really nearly as disappointed as I thought I might have been. I think the reason is I'm looking ahead and I know what we're capable of. I know Jimmy Prock's track record. I know we were going to get a solid foundation underneath us and start winning races. I always said Jimmy needed 20 runs to the finish line with this new hybrid combination before he could start collecting enough data to make consistently quick runs. I think our final round win at Charlotte was the 18th run to the finish line with that combo. I think we're actually right on target for a great year. Whether that equates to a championship, who knows. With the countdown format, it really changes the composure of the points system. You've got 18 races to get yourself in the top 10 position, and then you kind of throw all that away. It's almost like when NASCAR waves the yellow flag, everybody bunching up, then for six races you better hope you don't have any silly things go wrong, a bearing seize up, a clutch finger break. In the final round here at Houston, we had an O ring went bad on our fuel slide valve. Stuff like that during the regular season is a hiccup, in the final rounds it could take you out the championship. Q. You know the psychological aspect and approach to racing. What is the best way for you to overcome hardships when they come up on you? JACK BECKMAN: Good question. I might take your question even deeper. What's the best way to approach every single run? I found myself Sunday morning at Houston rolling up there saying, Why am I extra nervous today? I think the reason was I hadn't qualified number one for so long, maybe I was putting extra expectation and pressure on myself. If you were going to say that not putting undue pressure on yourself is the right way to approach each run, by definition I got to say that's the right way to approach the championship. It's certainly easier said than done. But I know I perform better, and I'm certain if answered honestly, everybody would agree that they perform their best without undue pressure. This cliché about digging deep, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, I just think people are missing the mark a little bit on that one. I think when you're confident, calm and cool, I think you're more able to go out there and able to execute run after run the way it needs to be done. Q. Can you analogize for us the intensity that you go through, the moments you roll through the water box on the starting line, to something else in the world of sports, as we are always trying to explain to people who don't know the sport as intimately as we do, who maybe didn't grow up with someone who brought them to the racetrack, can you compare your competitive moments when the spotlight is on, what you're going through, to maybe some other sports. We have the big Mayweather fight coming up, the NFL Draft, all these things that people know and understand. What is drag racing most similar to, if anything? JACK BECKMAN: Great question. And 'nothing' is the short answer. I can delve a little bit deeper. When you throw these words in like 'analogize' you're way past me (laughter). NASCAR, you send a bunch of competitors out there, the event lasts a long time, there's a lot of strategy and moving around, people don't show their hand till late in the race, there's the burst, then there's the top 10. Usually the person who finishes ninth is pretty happy. The person who finishes fourth says, What a great day, another top five finish. You hear NASCAR drivers say that. I've never heard a drag racer lose in the second round and go on TV and say, Man, another top five finish, this is wonderful. Our sport has a winner and a loser. It's a different format. It's what makes it so incredible. It's what makes it so incredibly difficult. So if you were to take that approach, it's similar to boxing in that you get out there, and at any second any mistake, it could end. You go out there and you have a great round, you go back to your corner. Guess what? You have to get ready to do it again and again and again. At the end of the day there's one person that didn't lose. Everybody else, by definition, is a loser in drag racing. I don't mean to say that as a negative sort of thing. I think it's what makes our sport so incredibly special. No, it doesn't last three hours like a NASCAR race with all the strategizing, but you have to be so incredibly mentally focused for a short period of time, then you got to get out of the vehicle, go back, decompress, let the adrenaline come down, interact with the fans. Another difference is I've never seen a Major League Baseball baseball pitcher go out and pitch an inning, then run up into the stands, sign autographs for 15 minutes, then go back to work again. I don't know if the average person appreciates that about drag racing. In one day that helmet might be on four different times and you have to completely go into your zone to perform. Then when it's off, there's an expectation that you go interact with the fans. I love to do it. There's a lot of drivers that would rather not do it.  They sit in their trailers. I think that's unfortunate because the fans deserve more than that. But I love that aspect of being able to settle back down, interact with the fans, get your breathing and everything restored, enjoy things for a while, then go back to this high level of focus. Q. Jack, in listening to everything you've said, it's obvious that the high point of your season is the victory. Quietly, other than that win, what has been the high point of your season? JACK BECKMAN: That 398 in Houston Friday night. It was pretty scary out there. Some tracks are more well-lit and suited to nighttime runs than others. I don't know if anything had changed there from last year, unless my eyes have gotten significantly worse. But it was just plain scary trying to find a groove on the track there. To go out there and wrestle the car to the finish line, put that kind of number on the scoreboard during a day that had seen rain delays for the fans, the hearty people stayed around and stuck it out, Spencer's 330 mile an hour run in dragster, and our run. It's a tribute to the folks for waiting through an entire day of delays and whatnot, to get to see that spectacular run, that was a big highlight for me. The bigger highlights for me have come with the helmet off. It is through the Infinite Hero Foundation. Just to put into perspective, the things we are doing, trying to change some lives: At Las Vegas, a mother and father had come up to me and talked to me on Friday. Then Saturday a different father came up and talked to me. Both of them were parents of Afghanistan combat veterans who came home and killed themselves. What do you say to parents like that? To put things in perspective, a bad day at the racetrack doesn't even register to what these folks have gone through. To know that through our program, trying to raise funds, issuing the grants to places like the brain treatment center, this is not a commercial, this is just to frame what you said, What's been the highlight of my year? I'm thinking through our efforts there's a lot of parents that won't have to say that in the future, that we can get the treatment for those veterans that have post-traumatic stress and are at a high risk of suicide, get them in before the worst happens, get them started on their path back to a new normal. I want to say one more thing. I know John Force doesn't like to get his back patted here. But I wish sometime, and you have to ask his brother Walker, because John will never take credit for this, if you asked him to briefly list some of the stuff, it would take four hours to do, the things that John does for fans and other racers, and never wants any credit for that. I also got to say this. Maybe one of the highlights of my career, it's something I can't wait to tell my grandkids, is that I got to race against John Force. In baseball, you have a pretty limited career because of your physical capabilities. In drag racing, guys like (indiscernible) has proved that if you take care of your eyes you can stay in a car till an advanced age. At 65, John is still the toughest Funny Car driver out there. There's no question in my mind there's a little bit extra when John Force is in the other lane. Because you can compete at different ages in this sport, it would be like a Little League player getting to grow up and play against Babe Ruth. John, I want you to know how much it means to so many of the other racers out there that you're still coming out and fighting the fight, doing the things you're doing. JOHN FORCE: Thank you, Jack. SCOTT SMITH: Thank you, Jack, for joining us on today's call. JACK BECKMAN: It's my pleasure, guys. It appreciate everything. SCOTT SMITH: See you in Atlanta. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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