With his eye on a racing milestone and his mind on new experiences, Jack Beckman returns to full-time competition on the Mission Foods tour this week when he drives John Force’s PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant Chevrolet SS in a bid for the Funny Car title at the 56th annual NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway.
“For the first time in five years, I will be racing the entire season,” said the 58-year-old Californian. “(And) things have changed noticeably in those five years, meaning several upcoming ‘firsts’ for me.
“We now begin the season at the Gatornationals, something I have never done,” he said, referencing the 60-odd years during which the series began in California with the Winternationals. “Then, there’s the fact that the tour has streamlined down to 20 events from the 24 that I had become accustomed to (and) testing is now allowed just two days prior to racing.
“Plus, I’ve never participated in the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge program and Gainesville is my first opportunity to do so. That’s a lot to take in,” he said.
Nevertheless, the widely respected driving instructor and cancer survivor admits that as much as he is looking forward to all of those first-time experiences, he is even more focused on a couple other numbers.
“I am most looking forward to a second win at the historic ‘Gators (he won the race in 2018 while driving for Schumacher Racing) and to the start of what I hope will be my second Funny Car championship (after initially hoisting the trophy in 2012).
“But I also have my eyes on a much bigger number and that’s 300,” he said. “JFR has won 299 Funny Car races and either Austin Prock’s Cornwell Tools team or my PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant team will put a Chevy SS in the history books with that next win. So, Chris Cunningham, Tim Fabrisi, Daniel Hood, myself and the rest of the PEAK squad have plenty of incentive to make the ‘Gators great.”
Summoned out of retirement last season to fill-in for an injured Force, “Fast Jack” earned a full-time ride on the strength of two wins in just eight starts and a second place points finish behind Prock.
It’s an opportunity he thought had passed him by after a lack of sponsorship sent him to the sidelines at the end of a 2020 season in which he finished third in the driver standing. Without a ride, the U.S. Air Force veteran returned to his “day job” as an elevator repairman.
“I went back to work at Schindler Elevator on November 9, 2020, after 22 years away, and expected to stay there,” he said. Then came the call from JFR President Robert Hight that put him back in a race car for the last three months of the 2024 season.
Driving the Chevy in which Force had won twice before suffering injuries in a 300 mile per hour crash in Richmond, Va., Beckman raised the trophy at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill., just across the river from St. Louis, and then applied an exclamation point with a victory in an all-JFR final round in the season-ending In-N-Out Burger Finals on his home track.
This story was originally published on March 5, 2025. 
