Rat
Nitro Member
- Joined
- May 14, 2007
- Messages
- 1,877
- Age
- 40
- Location
- Bay Shore, NY
The following is from my out-of-print book. I own all rights. Enjoy.
Jack Beckman has made a name for himself as a very, very tough competitor. A former instructor at Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing school, he has helped over 7,000 students find their way onto the track. He is a cancer survivor and looks like he’s lately been living his life to the fullest. A former Super Comp National and Divisional Champion, he is licensed in 12 classes, and drives one of the most feared Funny Cars in the class. One of the meanest racers on the track and one of the nicest off, it’s easy to see why Jack Beckman is drives the popular cars with swarms of fans that follow.
PK: The Countdown hasn’t really affected you much and I like the Countdown more when it hasn’t affected anybody. What are your overall feelings on the countdown and is it a good system for the NHRA?
JB: The countdown is an alogus (Latin; does not mathematically compute) to a yellow flag in NASCAR racing, it bunches everybody up and they stay in the same order. I agree with you, if they stay close to the finish and if it didn’t cost somebody with a big lead the race; then it had a good value. I think to truly understand where we’re at in this sport you have to look at it from many different angles, the car owners, the drivers, the fans, and the organizations. We gotta face, it’s a new generation of fans. Their attention spans are way shorter than it was forty years ago, more channels on television, the internet, and NHRA recognized that they had to do something even if it was an artificial they had to something to keep people’s interest to the final race of the year.
Just the fact that we have a countdown that can be called playoffs, kinda makes the last six races slightly more exciting because even though the round points are the same, they are worth more during those last six races. I’m old school, I think if somebody wins the first 15 races they should be able to go to the Bahamas and show up at Pomona and get their trophy, but I completely understand why we gotta keep the fans interested until the final day of the season.
PK: I am not a fan of good teams being told the best they can finish is 11th. Since, the NHRA resets the points at the start of the countdown to make the points race tighter, I feel that the NHRA should qualify everyone for the countdown who has run every countdown qualifying race. It would eliminate anyone getting locked out of a top ten and a top ten finish can still be a goal for everyone. Would you modify the system for teams that peak at the wrong time and get locked out of the all-important top ten when they may perform better than a locked in top ten
JB: What they (the NHRA) did was put a glass ceiling under 10th place and it’s a ceiling for 11th on down, the best 11th can finish is 11th; take Johnny Gray last year. (who finished 7th under a no countdown points system) NHRA’s defense to this was that post Indy no driver had ever come out of the top ten and won the championship, and my observation is that sometimes a top ten finish opens the door for sponsorship next season. What I think would be a better idea is cut everybody’s points in half after Indy, if someone’s got a 10 round lead it shouldn’t go to 1 and a half rounds; they still carry a 5 round lead. If you got lead going into Indy, you deserve to keep a lead going out of Indy and that person in 11th, 12th, and 13th still have a viable chance at racing for a top ten spot. With your (PK) system, the problem mandating that they gotta attend every race is what if you have a Jim Head or Gary Densham if they don’t have the backing to go to 16 races; maybe they ran really well at 10 of them and are in 12th place.
They may wanna attend the last 6 if he could still salvage a top ten finish, but if it was mandated that he had to attend the first 16; they might only go to 2 of the last 6. I think you do something to tighten up the points, but don’t cap it where only a certain number of teams are eligible for the championship.
PK: What does it take to be a successful driver in this class?
JB: A mediocre driver could win in a great car, but a great driver can’t win in a mediocre car unless you get incredibly lucky four times in a row on race day and that almost never ever happens. First off it takes a great car, I can’t even start the thing without four guys there and you’re depending on nine other people. I think to be an effective driver, maybe this is a slightly different approach maybe an enormous ego drives someone be hungry and passionate, but my personal opinion is that you better check your ego and recognize that you’re doing it as 10 people as not one person. Being a driver’s the best on the planet, you get almost all the credit when you seldom deserve it and almost none of the blame when you often deserve it; it’s a good gig. I always look at my job in a Nitro Funny Car as very, very different than my job was in my Super Comp Dragster.
My job is not to mess up what the crew did to the car, if I do my best their number comes up on the scoreboard; anything outside than I make it look worse than the car that they gave me. Check your ego, try to stay as calm as possible, and I love the way (Tony) Schumacher puts it, “Be a machine in that racecar.”
PK: Can you take me through what you do on a run from the burnout to the completion?
JB: It would be a little snug to be honest with you, oh you mean metaphorically, ok. It takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds, but to describe would take 4 and a half minutes. When I’m in the car strapped in at the water box, body up, before their gonna start the car I make sure I am in forward gear, the mag switches are off, I make sure my arm restraints to the point I can reach everything, get to the harness releases and the parachutes, and then I push the clutch in and hold the break. They windmill the motor to clean it out, they’ll nod at me when it’s time to start, I turn the mags on, they spin it over, it fires up, I pull the fuel pumps full volume; I told you this was gonna take 4 minutes. I make sure I’m on the break and on the clutch, when they drop the body and motion, break off, I control the speed with the clutch and I roll up and aim for the crew chief.
When he tells me to nail it I crack the throttle, it’s got a stop on it so it’s only gonna open to a 23 drill bit, not very much and I’m always looking right out in front of me at the track and trying to keep that thing pointed straight on the burnout. We’re not always gonna backup in our burnout marks, we’re not always gonna do a burnout in the center of the lane, so your job is to try to make the burnout marks go straight down track and at some tracks that’s very difficult; the car wants to washout. Lift, clutch in, break on, stop, break off, reverse, backup follow the guy backing me up to get in my tracks, stop, pull forward, stop, body up, they trim the fuel pumps, do all the shit they need to do, body down. Roll up to the crew chief which gets me six inches from the pre-stage beam and stop, and at that point I start trying to get into focus mode. Deep breath let it out, when he motions me forward its visor down and I try to control my breathing from that point on.
Roll up slowly as soon as I light the pre-stage expect in the final at Topeka. Clutch in, break on, wait for the other car, when I’m ready to go in, I’ll go fuel pump on, clutch out then I lock my eyes down on that top amber bulb; you can see the stage come on out of your peripheral I inch in and when it comes on stop. I like to think that I’m in sniper mode, I’m locked on something and I’m not moving; your calm, but you’re focused. When that light comes on boom, go, and I find my spot out on the racetrack and from that point your reacting to what the car does. You gotta keep it in the groove; you gotta do your best to keep it in the groove and there’s several different mindsets you take up there.
If the forecast is for good weather and it’s the first two qualifying runs and it does something stupid, you shut off. If you think you’re gonna get one run, you better get it to the finish line. If it’s race day, you get it to the finish line. Then there’s that mindset that we don’t beat up any equipment and then there’s that mindset that we own this stuff and we need to get this to the finish line to either get in the show or get the win light.
PK: What is your favorite race track?
JB: Anyone where I can get four win lights on Sunday. I love Pomona because as a kid I went to the races there, as an instructor at Frank Hawley’s I stood up there and flipped the switch 23,000 times. I love Vegas because as a Sportsman that’s the track that runs National Events that I ran the most at. Bristol’s bitchin’ cause you cannot beat that echo, Denver’s amazing because it’s carved into the side of a mountain, Chicago’s a great facility, Sonoma the road course, there all pretty cool for different reasons. E-Town’s a legend that’s what I love here and I said it in the press release, “if you are a Funny Car driver, when your done driving and you got your resume complete, it’s gotta have an E-Town Funny Car win.”
This event now gets convoluted, the Summer Nationals are now in Topeka, but in 1970 the schedule went from four events to seven events and this race was your Summer Nationals. Before ’71 this was the place where guys making a living match racing and pushing fiberglass all across the county, this was one of the main stays.
PK: Do you have any aspirations to go back to Top-Fuel or tune?
JB: Yes, yeah, one day I would love to get back in a dragster. I love to have to opportunity to drive a car that could win a national event and maybe say that you were one of the people that were able to win in both categories, and I always been a Top-Fuel guy. Since I was seven years old they were the kings of the sport, the first time I saw them push start at Orange County in 1973; instantly hooked. I always thought the Funny Cars were bitchin’ from an entirely different stand point; they put on the show, but the Top-Fuel Dragsters were the shit back then. When I was given the opportunity to drive a Funny Car I took it because there were no other driving opportunities and I’m so glad I did and I wouldn’t wanna switch now because I think the Funny Cars are so challenging, but one day I would love to get back in a Top-Fuel car.
PK: Do you wanna tune?
JB: I’m not that smart and I mean that sincerely; it’s a different kind of intelligence. Rahn Tobler, because I asked a lot of questions about tune up stuff, and he looks at me and goes, “Hey, my last driver ended up taking the crew chief job is that what you wanna do?” and I said, “Trust me, I couldn’t start the damn thing by myself if I was crew chief.” I like to understand how things work because I’m mechanical, but the crew chiefs think in an entirely different dimension.
PK: What did you do before this?
JB: Four years in the Air Force then I was an elevator guy for 11 years, and then I taught at the drag race school.
PK: What is your private ride and does your career as a driver influence any of your daily driving habits?
JB: A ’96 Nissan pickup with 251,000 miles on it and the only influence it might have is it’s downright ready for a parachute cause it doesn’t wanna stop and then a 2001 PT Cruiser with 140,000 and it wouldn’t do 150 mph if you dropped it out of an airplane. I’m gonna have to say no, they don’t influence how I drive. I still got my ’68 El Camino that runs 12.50’s, 10.15/134 on nitro, and I still got my Super Comp car; the one I won the championship with in 2003.
PK: What win, and single run mean more to you than all the others?
JB: That’s so difficult to say because there’s some wins when you look back there tough to remember, but there’s so many that mean so much for different reasons. This last win in Topeka means a lot because with all the crew changes and things that happened, I thought it might take us a year to get back to the winner’s circle. When you’re wondering if it’s gonna happen again sometimes you don’t know that your last win was your last win. Look at Tony Schumacher, they haven’t done a thing wrong they just keep getting beat in final rounds, you just never know. My first win in a Nitro car was unbelievable, but my first win ever at the ’98 Winternationals in Super Comp in a borrowed car, that’s awesome.
My 15 national event wins, I have to say that probably five mean a tremendous amount for different reasons.
PK: Were you a fan with the move to 1000 feet?
JB: Because I’m a purest when I first read it on the internet I was so upset for a half hour, then I started thinking about NHRA took such a risk we are defined as the quarter mile people and they took us away from that. I think it was maybe one of the more brilliant moves that they have made because there’s two goofy things about it which makes me believe that one day we probably do need to go back to quarter mile. One is we have two different finish lines now, and the other is you can’t compare numbers with quarter mile numbers, but if we ever go back to quarter mile their going to reduce the power so much that you also won’t be able too. The awkward thing is just having two different finish lines, but it fixed two things immediately, it cut the speeds down on the cars, and gave us more shutdown area every race track. I have to say if I was in their circumstances, I’m not sure I would have been smart enough to make that call.
PK: Do you think that there is any concern that the NHRA was trying to back them down when they were at 337 in the quarter, now there at 332 at 1000?
JB: Keep in mind, apples to apples, at the same speed at 1000 foot that you were running in a quarter mile, if a driver lifts when they were gonna lift at 1000 foot and get the chutes out, you’re doing 270 mph and decelerating at the quarter mile. That is an enormous difference than doing 337 and accelerating.
PK: Could there ever be a point where the increase in performance for these cars ends up that they can begin to greatly diminish the extra 320 feet?
JB: Absolutely. Plus, remember that the cars are an extra 170 pounds heavier now than they were seven years ago; absolutely. You got tons more, literally, kinetic energy going there, so yea we’re gonna reach another point in our sport where something needs to be done. The question then becomes do we slow down and stay at 1000 foot, or do we really slow them down and go back to the quarter mile.
PK: We can’t go eighth mile?
JB: You know what? Never say never because you’d see 3.3 second times outta Funny Car, 3.0 outta Top Fuel; it’ll still be unbelievably exciting. I think if at that point I rather them slow us way down and back to a quarter mile. If they go back to a quarter mile a good speed out of a dragster would be a 305, 298 out of a Funny Car. People say that sucks, they didn’t think that sucked back in 1992. I mean this sincerely I am still a huge fan of the sport, I can’t fucking believe they give me a paycheck to drive a Nitro Funny Car; I don’t think it jaded me or changed me. I still recognize that this is the most bitchin’ thing going, if it ends tomorrow I’ll be on the other side of the ropes, but I love the sport.
You get some people that get that fire suit on and start thinking their shit doesn’t stick, and eventually you don’t have this job anymore. It’s a great sport and the drivers need to keep in mind what keeps our sport, well obviously the cars are amazing, what makes our sport unique is that the fans can get close to us. Don’t get the stick up your ass and get this force field around you and I always tell people any driver that ever bitches at how many people are outside the ropes, shouldn’t have anybody outside the ropes. It’s as big a part of your job as driving the car.
PK: I know it was a whole rocky situation between all the changes between your team and the NAPA team, is everything smooth now?
JB: Sunday evening, we went up in Tobler’s crew chief lounge and we all had a shot and we all celebrated; that should tell you how it went. Nobody likes to lose, but half Capps’ crew guys were my crew guys, everybody came over and said we were happy for you. Clearly they didn’t wanna lose, it costs them money to lose, but they were happy for us. Everybody’s still pretty tight, you wanna win; but burnout to turnout you don’t have a friend on this planet. Before and after you wanna be able to respect them and this is a huge part of our lives.
Jack Beckman has made a name for himself as a very, very tough competitor. A former instructor at Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing school, he has helped over 7,000 students find their way onto the track. He is a cancer survivor and looks like he’s lately been living his life to the fullest. A former Super Comp National and Divisional Champion, he is licensed in 12 classes, and drives one of the most feared Funny Cars in the class. One of the meanest racers on the track and one of the nicest off, it’s easy to see why Jack Beckman is drives the popular cars with swarms of fans that follow.
PK: The Countdown hasn’t really affected you much and I like the Countdown more when it hasn’t affected anybody. What are your overall feelings on the countdown and is it a good system for the NHRA?
JB: The countdown is an alogus (Latin; does not mathematically compute) to a yellow flag in NASCAR racing, it bunches everybody up and they stay in the same order. I agree with you, if they stay close to the finish and if it didn’t cost somebody with a big lead the race; then it had a good value. I think to truly understand where we’re at in this sport you have to look at it from many different angles, the car owners, the drivers, the fans, and the organizations. We gotta face, it’s a new generation of fans. Their attention spans are way shorter than it was forty years ago, more channels on television, the internet, and NHRA recognized that they had to do something even if it was an artificial they had to something to keep people’s interest to the final race of the year.
Just the fact that we have a countdown that can be called playoffs, kinda makes the last six races slightly more exciting because even though the round points are the same, they are worth more during those last six races. I’m old school, I think if somebody wins the first 15 races they should be able to go to the Bahamas and show up at Pomona and get their trophy, but I completely understand why we gotta keep the fans interested until the final day of the season.
PK: I am not a fan of good teams being told the best they can finish is 11th. Since, the NHRA resets the points at the start of the countdown to make the points race tighter, I feel that the NHRA should qualify everyone for the countdown who has run every countdown qualifying race. It would eliminate anyone getting locked out of a top ten and a top ten finish can still be a goal for everyone. Would you modify the system for teams that peak at the wrong time and get locked out of the all-important top ten when they may perform better than a locked in top ten
JB: What they (the NHRA) did was put a glass ceiling under 10th place and it’s a ceiling for 11th on down, the best 11th can finish is 11th; take Johnny Gray last year. (who finished 7th under a no countdown points system) NHRA’s defense to this was that post Indy no driver had ever come out of the top ten and won the championship, and my observation is that sometimes a top ten finish opens the door for sponsorship next season. What I think would be a better idea is cut everybody’s points in half after Indy, if someone’s got a 10 round lead it shouldn’t go to 1 and a half rounds; they still carry a 5 round lead. If you got lead going into Indy, you deserve to keep a lead going out of Indy and that person in 11th, 12th, and 13th still have a viable chance at racing for a top ten spot. With your (PK) system, the problem mandating that they gotta attend every race is what if you have a Jim Head or Gary Densham if they don’t have the backing to go to 16 races; maybe they ran really well at 10 of them and are in 12th place.
They may wanna attend the last 6 if he could still salvage a top ten finish, but if it was mandated that he had to attend the first 16; they might only go to 2 of the last 6. I think you do something to tighten up the points, but don’t cap it where only a certain number of teams are eligible for the championship.
PK: What does it take to be a successful driver in this class?
JB: A mediocre driver could win in a great car, but a great driver can’t win in a mediocre car unless you get incredibly lucky four times in a row on race day and that almost never ever happens. First off it takes a great car, I can’t even start the thing without four guys there and you’re depending on nine other people. I think to be an effective driver, maybe this is a slightly different approach maybe an enormous ego drives someone be hungry and passionate, but my personal opinion is that you better check your ego and recognize that you’re doing it as 10 people as not one person. Being a driver’s the best on the planet, you get almost all the credit when you seldom deserve it and almost none of the blame when you often deserve it; it’s a good gig. I always look at my job in a Nitro Funny Car as very, very different than my job was in my Super Comp Dragster.
My job is not to mess up what the crew did to the car, if I do my best their number comes up on the scoreboard; anything outside than I make it look worse than the car that they gave me. Check your ego, try to stay as calm as possible, and I love the way (Tony) Schumacher puts it, “Be a machine in that racecar.”
PK: Can you take me through what you do on a run from the burnout to the completion?
JB: It would be a little snug to be honest with you, oh you mean metaphorically, ok. It takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds, but to describe would take 4 and a half minutes. When I’m in the car strapped in at the water box, body up, before their gonna start the car I make sure I am in forward gear, the mag switches are off, I make sure my arm restraints to the point I can reach everything, get to the harness releases and the parachutes, and then I push the clutch in and hold the break. They windmill the motor to clean it out, they’ll nod at me when it’s time to start, I turn the mags on, they spin it over, it fires up, I pull the fuel pumps full volume; I told you this was gonna take 4 minutes. I make sure I’m on the break and on the clutch, when they drop the body and motion, break off, I control the speed with the clutch and I roll up and aim for the crew chief.
When he tells me to nail it I crack the throttle, it’s got a stop on it so it’s only gonna open to a 23 drill bit, not very much and I’m always looking right out in front of me at the track and trying to keep that thing pointed straight on the burnout. We’re not always gonna backup in our burnout marks, we’re not always gonna do a burnout in the center of the lane, so your job is to try to make the burnout marks go straight down track and at some tracks that’s very difficult; the car wants to washout. Lift, clutch in, break on, stop, break off, reverse, backup follow the guy backing me up to get in my tracks, stop, pull forward, stop, body up, they trim the fuel pumps, do all the shit they need to do, body down. Roll up to the crew chief which gets me six inches from the pre-stage beam and stop, and at that point I start trying to get into focus mode. Deep breath let it out, when he motions me forward its visor down and I try to control my breathing from that point on.
Roll up slowly as soon as I light the pre-stage expect in the final at Topeka. Clutch in, break on, wait for the other car, when I’m ready to go in, I’ll go fuel pump on, clutch out then I lock my eyes down on that top amber bulb; you can see the stage come on out of your peripheral I inch in and when it comes on stop. I like to think that I’m in sniper mode, I’m locked on something and I’m not moving; your calm, but you’re focused. When that light comes on boom, go, and I find my spot out on the racetrack and from that point your reacting to what the car does. You gotta keep it in the groove; you gotta do your best to keep it in the groove and there’s several different mindsets you take up there.
If the forecast is for good weather and it’s the first two qualifying runs and it does something stupid, you shut off. If you think you’re gonna get one run, you better get it to the finish line. If it’s race day, you get it to the finish line. Then there’s that mindset that we don’t beat up any equipment and then there’s that mindset that we own this stuff and we need to get this to the finish line to either get in the show or get the win light.
PK: What is your favorite race track?
JB: Anyone where I can get four win lights on Sunday. I love Pomona because as a kid I went to the races there, as an instructor at Frank Hawley’s I stood up there and flipped the switch 23,000 times. I love Vegas because as a Sportsman that’s the track that runs National Events that I ran the most at. Bristol’s bitchin’ cause you cannot beat that echo, Denver’s amazing because it’s carved into the side of a mountain, Chicago’s a great facility, Sonoma the road course, there all pretty cool for different reasons. E-Town’s a legend that’s what I love here and I said it in the press release, “if you are a Funny Car driver, when your done driving and you got your resume complete, it’s gotta have an E-Town Funny Car win.”
This event now gets convoluted, the Summer Nationals are now in Topeka, but in 1970 the schedule went from four events to seven events and this race was your Summer Nationals. Before ’71 this was the place where guys making a living match racing and pushing fiberglass all across the county, this was one of the main stays.
PK: Do you have any aspirations to go back to Top-Fuel or tune?
JB: Yes, yeah, one day I would love to get back in a dragster. I love to have to opportunity to drive a car that could win a national event and maybe say that you were one of the people that were able to win in both categories, and I always been a Top-Fuel guy. Since I was seven years old they were the kings of the sport, the first time I saw them push start at Orange County in 1973; instantly hooked. I always thought the Funny Cars were bitchin’ from an entirely different stand point; they put on the show, but the Top-Fuel Dragsters were the shit back then. When I was given the opportunity to drive a Funny Car I took it because there were no other driving opportunities and I’m so glad I did and I wouldn’t wanna switch now because I think the Funny Cars are so challenging, but one day I would love to get back in a Top-Fuel car.
PK: Do you wanna tune?
JB: I’m not that smart and I mean that sincerely; it’s a different kind of intelligence. Rahn Tobler, because I asked a lot of questions about tune up stuff, and he looks at me and goes, “Hey, my last driver ended up taking the crew chief job is that what you wanna do?” and I said, “Trust me, I couldn’t start the damn thing by myself if I was crew chief.” I like to understand how things work because I’m mechanical, but the crew chiefs think in an entirely different dimension.
PK: What did you do before this?
JB: Four years in the Air Force then I was an elevator guy for 11 years, and then I taught at the drag race school.
PK: What is your private ride and does your career as a driver influence any of your daily driving habits?
JB: A ’96 Nissan pickup with 251,000 miles on it and the only influence it might have is it’s downright ready for a parachute cause it doesn’t wanna stop and then a 2001 PT Cruiser with 140,000 and it wouldn’t do 150 mph if you dropped it out of an airplane. I’m gonna have to say no, they don’t influence how I drive. I still got my ’68 El Camino that runs 12.50’s, 10.15/134 on nitro, and I still got my Super Comp car; the one I won the championship with in 2003.
PK: What win, and single run mean more to you than all the others?
JB: That’s so difficult to say because there’s some wins when you look back there tough to remember, but there’s so many that mean so much for different reasons. This last win in Topeka means a lot because with all the crew changes and things that happened, I thought it might take us a year to get back to the winner’s circle. When you’re wondering if it’s gonna happen again sometimes you don’t know that your last win was your last win. Look at Tony Schumacher, they haven’t done a thing wrong they just keep getting beat in final rounds, you just never know. My first win in a Nitro car was unbelievable, but my first win ever at the ’98 Winternationals in Super Comp in a borrowed car, that’s awesome.
My 15 national event wins, I have to say that probably five mean a tremendous amount for different reasons.
PK: Were you a fan with the move to 1000 feet?
JB: Because I’m a purest when I first read it on the internet I was so upset for a half hour, then I started thinking about NHRA took such a risk we are defined as the quarter mile people and they took us away from that. I think it was maybe one of the more brilliant moves that they have made because there’s two goofy things about it which makes me believe that one day we probably do need to go back to quarter mile. One is we have two different finish lines now, and the other is you can’t compare numbers with quarter mile numbers, but if we ever go back to quarter mile their going to reduce the power so much that you also won’t be able too. The awkward thing is just having two different finish lines, but it fixed two things immediately, it cut the speeds down on the cars, and gave us more shutdown area every race track. I have to say if I was in their circumstances, I’m not sure I would have been smart enough to make that call.
PK: Do you think that there is any concern that the NHRA was trying to back them down when they were at 337 in the quarter, now there at 332 at 1000?
JB: Keep in mind, apples to apples, at the same speed at 1000 foot that you were running in a quarter mile, if a driver lifts when they were gonna lift at 1000 foot and get the chutes out, you’re doing 270 mph and decelerating at the quarter mile. That is an enormous difference than doing 337 and accelerating.
PK: Could there ever be a point where the increase in performance for these cars ends up that they can begin to greatly diminish the extra 320 feet?
JB: Absolutely. Plus, remember that the cars are an extra 170 pounds heavier now than they were seven years ago; absolutely. You got tons more, literally, kinetic energy going there, so yea we’re gonna reach another point in our sport where something needs to be done. The question then becomes do we slow down and stay at 1000 foot, or do we really slow them down and go back to the quarter mile.
PK: We can’t go eighth mile?
JB: You know what? Never say never because you’d see 3.3 second times outta Funny Car, 3.0 outta Top Fuel; it’ll still be unbelievably exciting. I think if at that point I rather them slow us way down and back to a quarter mile. If they go back to a quarter mile a good speed out of a dragster would be a 305, 298 out of a Funny Car. People say that sucks, they didn’t think that sucked back in 1992. I mean this sincerely I am still a huge fan of the sport, I can’t fucking believe they give me a paycheck to drive a Nitro Funny Car; I don’t think it jaded me or changed me. I still recognize that this is the most bitchin’ thing going, if it ends tomorrow I’ll be on the other side of the ropes, but I love the sport.
You get some people that get that fire suit on and start thinking their shit doesn’t stick, and eventually you don’t have this job anymore. It’s a great sport and the drivers need to keep in mind what keeps our sport, well obviously the cars are amazing, what makes our sport unique is that the fans can get close to us. Don’t get the stick up your ass and get this force field around you and I always tell people any driver that ever bitches at how many people are outside the ropes, shouldn’t have anybody outside the ropes. It’s as big a part of your job as driving the car.
PK: I know it was a whole rocky situation between all the changes between your team and the NAPA team, is everything smooth now?
JB: Sunday evening, we went up in Tobler’s crew chief lounge and we all had a shot and we all celebrated; that should tell you how it went. Nobody likes to lose, but half Capps’ crew guys were my crew guys, everybody came over and said we were happy for you. Clearly they didn’t wanna lose, it costs them money to lose, but they were happy for us. Everybody’s still pretty tight, you wanna win; but burnout to turnout you don’t have a friend on this planet. Before and after you wanna be able to respect them and this is a huge part of our lives.
