Jack Beckman was seeking his career fourth Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals title to celebrate his 60th\u00a0birthday on Sunday, but the PEAK SQUAD had to settle for their third runner-up finish of the season when Ron Capps beat the PEAK Chevrolet SS Funny Car to the finish line.<\/p>\n
John Force Racing\u2019s Alexis DeJoria was a semifinalist, Josh Hart bowed out in the second round and Jordan Vandergriff\u2019s day ended in the first round.<\/p>\n
The long-time competitors and former teammates left the starting line with nearly identical reaction times (Beckman\u2019s .051 to Capps\u2019 .048) and it was a close race throughout, but Capps grabbed the win with his run of 3.969 seconds at 328.54 mph to Beckman\u2019s 4.011 seconds at 323.43 mph. It was the second time this season the two squared off in a final round, with Beckman also finishing runner-up in Charlotte.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe PEAK SQUAD was three hundredths of a second away from the perfect weekend,\u201d said Beckman. \u201cIt was a darn good weekend. Our PEAK Chevy was making good, consistent, quick laps and this is what\u2019s going to win championships. We\u2019re getting into the hot summer months and we\u2019re running good in cool conditions on hot race tracks. We haven\u2019t done the autopsy on the engine but I think we wounded it in the final round. It\u2019s frustrating to get that far and not close the deal. But, to put it in perspective, we were the second-best Funny Car here this weekend. We made a move up in points. We tightened to everybody in front of us except Capps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nice thing is this is when other cars start taking a shot against you because they know we\u2019re driving solid, we\u2019re tuning solid, and the PEAK Chevy\u2019s just gonna be a really tough combination to get around. We\u2019ve gone to three final rounds in the last four races and we got our first win. Just give me any racetrack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beckman, who earned victories at Norwalk in 2009, 2015 and 2017, made his 81st final round appearance in this year\u2019s event. He defeated Spencer Hyde in round one, Daniel Wilkerson in the second round, and Austin Prock in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
DeJoria faced Capps in her fourth semifinals showing of the 2026 season. She grabbed the holeshot by just two thousandths of a second (.079 to .081) but hazed the tires before halftrack, slowing to a run of 4.905 seconds at 160.81 mph to Capps\u2019 4.051 seconds at 310.13 mph.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the best, most consistent, fast race car through most of the day until the semifinals,\u201d said DeJoria. \u201cThat was the first run, we didn\u2019t make a sub 4-second run. We\u2019ve earned 47 points this weekend and that\u2019s strong. There are no issues. We know exactly how our car is running. We now know exactly what this Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevy is capable of and we feel really strong about it. I\u2019ll say it again, any one of these upcoming races is going to be ours. We know we have a car to win. And that\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeJoria defeated Blake Alexander in round one and Chad Green in the second round.<\/p>\n
Hart defeated Scott Farley in round one with a run of 3.962 seconds at 275.39 mph to Farley\u2019s 5.396 and 135.54. Matched up against Clay Millikan in round two, the Speedmaster Top Fuel Dragster grabbed the holeshot (.065 to .076) but lost traction and smoked the tires 100 feet into the run. He pedaled the throttle, trying to hook the rear tires back up and Millican lost traction at halftrack but, by then, had enough momentum to take the win, running 4.290 seconds to Hart\u2019s 5.290 seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a rough day for the Speedmaster team,\u201d said Hart. \u201cI felt like I did a good job on the tree in the second round but, when the car started to haze the tires and I attempted to pedal it, it just sat sideways and didn\u2019t like it. There was zero traction at that point. The track and weather conditions changed pretty quickly today and we weren\u2019t able to adapt quick enough. We\u2019ll regroup and be ready for Sonoma in three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his round one matchup against J.R. Todd, Vandergriff had a good reaction time (.060) and a solid run of 3.946 seconds at 329.83 mph but Todd had a great reaction (.043) and took the win despite a slower run of 3.951 seconds at 329.42 mph.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat one was really tough but that\u2019s drag racing,\u201d said Vandergriff. \u201cI had a good performance, but Todd had a fantastic performance. We put ourselves in that position by qualifying 11th\u00a0and we obviously want to be higher than that coming into race day. When you go up against J.R. Todd and the Yellow Fellas, you know you\u2019re going to throw down. But, overall, it was a great week getting to spend time with everyone at Cornwell Quality Tools leading into the weekend and then competing for them at the track. We know we have a great race car and we can\u2019t wait for the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 11th of 20 races of the 2026 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series is the July 17-19 DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals presented by PowerEdge at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.<\/p>\n
The post Birthday Beckman Earns Runner-Up Finish at Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jack Beckman was seeking his career fourth Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals title to celebrate his 60th\u00a0birthday on Sunday, but the PEAK SQUAD had to settle for their third runner-up finish of the season when Ron Capps beat the PEAK Chevrolet SS Funny Car to the finish line. John Force Racing\u2019s Alexis DeJoria was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}