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BRAINERD, Minn. (Aug. 11, 2007) - Jack Beckman continued his path of consistency today in the 2007 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, qualifying the Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger R/T in the No. 5 spot for the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, posting three solid and one semi-solid passes of 5.774/169.00 (No. 9 at the time), 4.884/315.12 (No. 4), 4.817/317.12 (No. 5) and finally a 4.875/319.52 (No. 5).
"First run we smoked the tires down track a little bit and I clicked it," explained Beckman. "After that we've been stellar. We've been a top-five car every session again."
The bad news is he faces his teammate and No. 1 in points Ron Capps in the opening round of eliminations on Sunday. "It's not the pairing that you would want," said Beckman, fifth in the rankings towards the next phase of the Countdown to the Championship for the top eight. "Certainly, we have a chance to do a lot of moving in the points. Ron's pretty well solidified his position, but, like all the Schumacher cars, we race for everything. We ran identical E.T.s the last session, so on paper it ought to be a great race.
"The cool thing about what's happening," he said, referring to the re-assignment of DSR crew chiefs, "now that Todd (Okuhara) and Phil (Shuler) are overseeing the Mopar/Oakley car that Gary Scelzi drives and the MTS car, is Gary's car had a problem with the fuel control valve. So, we'd already run two good runs (before the final), so we took a known good valve off of our car, put it on their car, got them in the show, put our backup on our car, and it ran exactly the same. So now we know how to address that kind of problem, and we have backups for both things.
"Todd and Phil are sharing tuning duties on both cars, but Phil is basically managing the MTS team right now, so it's really his first chance to kind of stand in the limelight, and I think so far we're looking good. So, hopefully getting into the winner's circle tomorrow will be fun."
BECKMAN CLAIMS NO. 5 IN BRAINERD QUALIFYING
BRAINERD, Minn. (Aug. 11, 2007) - Jack Beckman continued his path of consistency today in the 2007 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, qualifying the Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger R/T in the No. 5 spot for the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, posting three solid and one semi-solid passes of 5.774/169.00 (No. 9 at the time), 4.884/315.12 (No. 4), 4.817/317.12 (No. 5) and finally a 4.875/319.52 (No. 5).
"First run we smoked the tires down track a little bit and I clicked it," explained Beckman. "After that we've been stellar. We've been a top-five car every session again."
The bad news is he faces his teammate and No. 1 in points Ron Capps in the opening round of eliminations on Sunday. "It's not the pairing that you would want," said Beckman, fifth in the rankings towards the next phase of the Countdown to the Championship for the top eight. "Certainly, we have a chance to do a lot of moving in the points. Ron's pretty well solidified his position, but, like all the Schumacher cars, we race for everything. We ran identical E.T.s the last session, so on paper it ought to be a great race.
"The cool thing about what's happening," he said, referring to the re-assignment of DSR crew chiefs, "now that Todd (Okuhara) and Phil (Shuler) are overseeing the Mopar/Oakley car that Gary Scelzi drives and the MTS car, is Gary's car had a problem with the fuel control valve. So, we'd already run two good runs (before the final), so we took a known good valve off of our car, put it on their car, got them in the show, put our backup on our car, and it ran exactly the same. So now we know how to address that kind of problem, and we have backups for both things.
"Todd and Phil are sharing tuning duties on both cars, but Phil is basically managing the MTS team right now, so it's really his first chance to kind of stand in the limelight, and I think so far we're looking good. So, hopefully getting into the winner's circle tomorrow will be fun."
