'What A Day!' IE Elevator Repairman, NHRA Funny Car Driver Wins Big

CORONA, CA — After winning the 300th NHRA Funny Car race for John Force Racing, Corona's Jack Beckman is headed back to work as an elevator repairman Monday.

Beckman was the winner in Funny Car in the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals at the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip Sunday, giving his team 300 career wins in Funny Car.

Beckman has three of those wins. John Force, the team owner and one- time driver from Yorba Linda, won 157 Funny Car races.

"It felt good to be able to pedal the thing and take it down there and have the car not blow up. It*s pretty cool when they hand you a trophy, your car still intact, and get John Force Racing its 300th Funny car win," Beckman said.

Beckman, who has won 38 NHRA races in his career, was out of drag racing for almost four years. When Force crashed in a race at Richmond, Virginia in June, and was recovering from his injuries, Beckman was called and asked to finish the season for the team.

Beckman competed in eight races for John Force Racing in 2024, winning two, including the NHRA Auto Club Finals at Pomona in November. In the four years he was out of NHRA drag racing, Beckman worked as an elevator repairman, a job he still has. He said he was scheduled to work on Monday, the day after winning the Winternationals Funny Car race.

"The car was amazing all weekend. We qualified fourth, but we got qualifying points every single round and ran 3.80s every round of eliminations until the final when the flawless part fell off a couple of hundred feet out and car shook the tires and knocked them loose," Beckman said. "That's where, as a driver, you've got to be ready to give one back to the team because they'd given me everything all weekend long."

Beckman won the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Winternationals race on Sunday, defeating Daniel Wilkerson in the final round, and is the leader in the NHRA Funny Car standings after three races.

Top Fuel driver Clay Millican won at the NHRA Winternationals for the first time in his career beating Tony Stewart in the final round.

Millican won the eighth NHRA Top Fuel race of his career and his first since the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis in 2024.

"My crew chief (Jim Oberhofer) told me he had it loaded up and a couple things were going to happen. He said we're going to win, we're going to blow up and if we lose, we're going to be a footnote in history," said Millican, a driver for Rick Ware Racing. "Thank goodness we're not a footnote in history. Tony Stewart is going to win one of these soon, but all I know is we won the Winternationals."

Stewart, a NASCAR Hall of Famer and three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, reached the finals in NHRA Top Fuel for the second time in his career. His first final appearance was at Sonoma Raceway in 2024. He was also in the 4-Wide Nationals final at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last year.

Millican beat Stewart in a fiery run at Pomona. His car's engine caught fire as it crossed the finish line well ahead of Stewart.

"But boy, that final round was forever. When you blow it up and -- and we blew it up good -- and you got a HANS [head restraint] device on, you're stretching that HANS to its limits, trying to look over like, `Is he coming or not?' I couldn't get there quick enough," Millican said. "I promise I never let off the throttle, even though it wasn't running no more. But I had that thing buried. I was stomping on the loud pedal harder than normal. What a day."

Greg Anderson won in Pro Stock at the Winternationals setting the track record in the final round.

Anderson won the final race over Dallas Glenn in 6.476 seconds, breaking the record of 6.480 seconds at the track set by Erica Enders in 2014.

"We set a [track] record in the final and this is the way you want to do it," said Anderson, a driver of KB Titan Racing. "You want to go out and earn it every single run, and you want to save your best for the final round, and that's what we did. These are proud days today, and just like three months ago here in the final round, you want to give your best shot in the final round against the toughest competition."

The next race for NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series is April 11-13 at the 25th annual NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.