With the TF World Championship in the bag, will DSR garner another at the NHRA World Finals?
Championship within reach of Beckman, Infinite Hero team but helping Infinite Hero already makes it a winning season
BROWNSBURG, IN – It would seem Jack Beckman is disappointed that his Infinite Hero Dodge Charger R/T Funny 
Car team won’t arrive at this weekend’s season finale ranked first in points after finishing the regular season with a commanding lead.
When points were reset to start the six-race NHRA Countdown to the Championship after Labor Day, the Don Schumacher Racing team’s lead of 178 was down to 30. And then, Del Worsham of Kalitta Motorsports opened the Countdown playoff by winning three of the first four Countdown events.
Jack and the team led by crew chiefs Jimmy Prock with assistants John Medlen and Chris Cunningham fought back at the third Countdown race by winning the pole, setting the NHRA elapsed time record at 3.897 and leaving Reading, Pa., with their seventh title of the season to close in on Worsham.
When this weekend’s Auto Club NHRA Nationals at Pomona, Calif., begins Friday Jack will be ranked second and 38 points behind Worsham. Each round win on Sunday during eliminations is worth 20 points.
“The real point of being a race car driver is to win a world championship,” said Jack, who won the Funny Car championship in 2012 and an NHRA Sportsman title in 2003.
“Del and I are both (Southern California) guys and the awards banquet is the day after the last race in Hollywood. You have to reserve tickets for it, get your kids clothes for it because it’s a formal affair and your wife has to get a dress for it.
“My family will be overjoyed if they can wear new clothes Monday night or a bunch of that stuff will get returned to stores and that would be very disappointing. It will come down to one team winning it all and one team being bitterly disappointed.
“No matter what, we’ve done some absolutely incredible things this year.”
And not all are measured in time slips, records and trophies.
Toward the end of the 2014 season, the status of Jack’s team was in jeopardy until Terry Chandler provided the financial support that allowed Don Schumacher Racing to commit to fielding the team for the full 2015 season. And Chandler, who lives in New Mexico, donated branding opportunities to the Infinite Hero Foundation (InfiniteHero.org) that provides grants to help veterans returning from war with physical or mental injuries.
“Everything this Infinite Hero team has accomplished is because of Terry Chandler’s generosity, and I won’t ever forget that,” said Jack, 49, a former U.S. Air Force sergeant. “No matter what happens at Pomona I know we all can be proud of the things we have done on and off the track.”
Each run down the track this year Jack carried at least 10 Infinite Hero Challenge Coins on board his 2015 Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car that were exchanged with NHRA fans for a $100 donation to Infinite Hero.
“The Challenge Coin program will top $150,000. When you throw out a large number like that what gets lost is the effort that went into making that number; that’s 1,500 coins that NHRA fans have come to our pit area and donated $100 for. I took those coins down the track, sign them and personally hand them to the fans.
“When you look at the dollar figure and see what that does … that will pay for several soldiers who came back with PTS (Post Traumatic Syndrome) to go through a month of therapy at The Brain Treatment Center (MRT in Newport Beach, Calif.). The exoskeleton suit (paralyzed retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 5) Gary Linfoot wears cost $100,000 so between what we generated last year and this year it would pay for two of those suits to be put in therapy centers to enable veterans to come and stand up to go through therapy. It’s just changing people’s lives.
“No matter what happens this year the Infinite Hero program with Terry is what I am most humbled by and proudest to have been part of.”
Langdon wants to end 2015 with win for Red Fuel/Sandvik team during NHRA Finals at Pomona in Southern California at home track
– Auto Club Raceway combines two very important things for Shawn Langdon – family and racing.
The driver of the Red Fuel Powered by Schumacher dragster from Mira Loma, Calif., grew up going to the famed Pomona racetrack dreaming that one day he too would be competing there.
It’s a facility that has been kind to Langdon, who has three career wins in five final round appearances at Auto Club Raceway, including a win at the 2015 season opener while driving for Alan Johnson Racing.
“That’s a track that I grew up racing at, a track I grew up as a kid going to, watching my idols race so it’s really neat for me to go there and compete in Top Fuel at a place like Pomona,” Langdon said.
“I always enjoy going to Pomona. There’s a lot of great memories there but I definitely want to get this Red Fuel car in a winner’s circle before the 2015 season comes to a close.”
This weekend’s NHRA Finals at Pomona is the last event on the Mello Yello Drag Racing tour this season.
Shawn began driving the Red Fuel dragster at the start of this year’s six-race Countdown to the Championship near Charlotte. The team led by crew chiefs Todd Okuhara and Phil Shuler are eighth in Top Fuel standings, looking to move up in points standings with a Pomona win.
“Here lately our car has been really great in qualifying and we have just had some bad luck on race day,” Shawn said. “It would mean a lot to me to get a win for everyone at Don Schumacher Racing to close out this season. I always have a lot of family and friends come out to this event and to do well in front of them would be pretty special for me.”
Hagan hopes to close 2015 season on a high note with third straight NHRA Finals win for Mopar/Rocky Boots team at Pomona finale
– The 2015 season is coming to a close this weekend with the NHRA Auto Club Finals in Pomona, Calif., where the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series started its journey in February.
It started well for Matt Hagan and the Mopar Express Lane/Rocky Boots team and they plan on ending it the same way they started – with a win. In fact, the team led by crew chief Dickie Venables and Michael Knudsen has won three times at the Pomona Finals (2011, 2013-14).
“Some tracks you go to and it’s special because of the history,” said Matt, the two-time and reigning world champion. “We’ve had a lot of history at Pomona, a lot of good memories there, good times there. It’s kind of a bittersweet end to the year because we started off so strong and haven’t been that way lately but we are working on things.
“We are out of the championship running and Dickie (Venables) is already working on next year. That’s encouraging to me. He’s hungry for a win, we all are. We would love nothing more to get a win at Pomona this weekend and give our guys a boost to end the season.”
The Mopar/Rocky Boots team sits fifth in championship standings with four event wins and two runner-up finishes in 2015. The team also recorded four No. 1 qualifying efforts and recorded the quickest pass in Funny Car history with an elapsed time of 3.879 seconds during the first round of eliminations on Aug. 21 at Brainerd, Minn.
“We’ve had a lot of highlights this year,” Matt said. “There’s absolutely no reason to be disappointed in our season. We’ve got a great group of guys and had a lot of success. We’ve made two runs in the 3.8-second range and no one can take those runs away from us.
“For everyone at Mopar, Rocky Boots, Pennzoil, all of our great partners we’d like to get one more trophy for them to close out this season. With a team like we have with Dickie, Michael and everyone else I know we can do that.”
Capps, NAPA team running strong heading to finale at Pomona
– It’s been a long 24-race NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season but Ron Capps and the NAPA AUTO PARTS Funny Car team might not want to see it end this weekend.
NAPA crew chief Rahn Tobler and the team have been hot and consistent over the past five events by qualifying in the top-five at each race and advancing to the semifinals at the last four in their 2015 Dodge Charger R/T.
“Yeah, our NAPA Dodge has been very solid the last part of the season,” said Ron, who will start racing Friday in the Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona, Calif., ranked fourth in points.
“Tobler and the NAPA guys have worked hard all year and they’ve been seeing that pay off.”
The NAPA team, which has won twice in five championship rounds, carry a 32-21 elimination round record and intend for Ron to win his first Finals title and third overall at Pomona.
“I’m excited more so for Pomona than I have been for a long time. We don’t have a chance to win the championship but Tobler has found a lot of little things that has helped and we’re already excited about 2016.”
The NAPA team is 140 out of first place and has a better chance of overtaking Don Schumacher Racing teammate Tommy Johnson Jr. who is 43 ahead in third.
“We want to go the (awards banquet Monday night) with all our guys to support our other teams and there’d be nothing better than going with a little headache from celebrating a win at Pomona. That would be the ultimate way to end the season for our NAPA team.”
Having 2015 NHRA Top Fuel world championship trophy in hand not deterring Brown, Matco team from winning at Pomona finale
– If anyone believes Antron Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army team won’t be hungry to win this weekend because they clinched the 2015 Top Fuel world championship 10 days ago, then they don’t know Antron and the members of his team.
“Even though we have won the world championship – that’s all said and done – people may think that our work is done, but our work’s not done. It’s not complete yet,” Antron said. “We have one more race on the table.”
That race is this weekend’s Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona, Calif., in the last of 24 events of the NHRA Mello Yello Series season. The Matco team led by crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald with assistant Brad Mason arrive at Pomona with an insurmountable lead of 162 points over Don Schumacher Racing teammate and reigning world champion Tony Schumacher.
“The thing about it is, we’re still in competition. We’re still trying to make a little bit more history before this year’s out,” Antron said. “I mean, we would love to end the year on a win. The only difference is, there’s no strategy involved in this last race. We’re not worried about the qualifying points. We can go out there and have some fun with it, go, alright, in our gauge the track says it can hold a (3.71). Maybe we can go out there and say, let’s see if we can run a .69. You get what I mean? Now we have the leeway to push it even harder, don’t have to worry about what happens afterward. You don’t have to worry about tap dancing or doing strategy anymore.
“Now we can go in there and let our hair down, but I don’t have no hair to let down, so we’ll give it all we got, have some fun with it, go out and be aggressive. The weather’s going to be right and it’s going to be fast enough to go out there and throw down.”
This season has been a record-setter for Antron, the 2012 Top Fuel world champion, and his Matco mates.
They have won seven NHRA event titles that is one more than Antron’s previous career best that he accomplished four times.
They became the first Top Fuel dragster to crack into the 3.6-second range and hold the NHRA elapsed time record at 3.680 set on Aug. 23 at Brainerd, Minn. Antron also recorded the fastest run of his career, a 331.12-mph blast also at Brainerd.
Adding to those accomplishments are five No. 1 qualifying runs en route to posting a record of 48-16 in Sunday elimination rounds.
And they won their second world championship in four years.
“The first one’s always going to be sentimental because it’s your first one. You finally as a team, a collective group, figure out how to get the job done by winning that championship. Now the second one, we knew what was at task because what makes the second one so sweet, it makes it better than the first, is that the competition has evolved. The class as a whole has gotten extremely competitive where we went from probably six to eight teams that were capable of winning races to now we have about 14 to 16 teams that can win races.
“Brian Corradi, Mark Oswald, our whole Matco Tools team went out there and had a game plan from the beginning of the year to attack. We’re going to attack every race like it’s a Countdown race. We knew we were going to have some mishaps and hiccups here and there, but we treated it as such. We grew. We were just priming ourselves for when the Countdown started. We were able to make the necessary adjustments and peak at the right time like we wanted to.”
The Matco team became the first in a nitro category to win the first three of six Countdown to the Championship playoff races to add to the lead it held after the 18-race regular season.
