Photography: John Force Racing / Gary Nastase / Auto Imagery
LAS VEGAS, Nevada (April 11, 2025) – A 90-degree day and a 130-degree racetrack proved challenging for both drivers and crews Friday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway where, on Day 1 of qualifying for the seventh NHRA 4-Wide Nationals, reigning Funny Car World Champion Austin Prock was the provisional No. 4 qualifier and point leader “Fast Jack” Beckman No. 5.
Two-time Top Fuel World Champion Brittany Force, the LVMS track record holder for both elapsed time and speed and a winner on the same track last fall, lost traction early on both Friday attempts and will go into Saturday’s final two sessions qualified only 13th in her Graham Rahal Performance dragster.
“Out of the box we made a pretty respectable run,” Prock said of his opening 3.972 in the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS. “The track was really tricky today. It was above 90 degrees ambient temperature, and the track was up in the 130-degree range. So, in difficult conditions, I was proud of that first run.
“Second run, it left out of control fast and just got away from me,” said the national record holder for speed at 341.28 miles per hour. “So, we’ve got some homework to do. We’ll come back tomorrow, and we should make two nice runs.”
Meanwhile, because he was only fifth quickest in the first session, Beckman failed to earn a qualifying bonus point for the first time all year. He had posted a top three time in 10 straight sessions before Friday.
“We were still a top five car,” Beckman said. “We started in lane four and opened up with a nice, straight run down the dragstrip (at 3.988 seconds). And even though conditions were hotter and there was not as much traction in the second session, the PEAK squad had enough data, we turned the knobs up and went to 3.972, second quickest run of the session. That was good for two more bonus points, and we’re sitting where we need to be right now.”
Beckman had high praise for NHRA’s Safety Safari crew which is responsible for track preparation and maintenance.
“The fact of the matter is that the four-wide is a little different animal,” he said.” With two-wide, the track crew gets a ton of time to prep two lanes. Well, they’ve got the same amount of time to prep four lanes, and they did a magnificent job.
“A track that hot, you can only get it so good,” explained the man who earned John Force Racing’s 300th Funny car victory when he won last month at Pomona, Calif. “But I don’t know that lane four (the lane in which he began the qualifying ritual) is going to be our lane of choice.
“But I am so proud of our team and what we were able to run in that lane,” said the man whose PEAK Chevy is flying the Graham Rahal Performance colors this weekend, as is Brittany’s dragster.
“Black cars look awesome,” Beckman said. “And this car looks awesome. I’d like to park it in the winners’ circle Sunday but, between now and then, we have a lot of running to do. We have to gather some data, and we have the Mission Foods 2Fast/2Tasty Challenge tomorrow, but for PEAK and Chevy, I’m smiling.”
“I’m very excited to be teamed up with Graham Rahal Performance this weekend as a primary sponsor here in Las Vegas and as an associate for the remainder of the season,” Brittany said of the GRP partnership.
“We all want to do well for Graham Rahal and everyone involved at GRP,” said the four-time winner at LVMS. “We struggled today (on two shut-off runs), so we’ll have to get after it tomorrow. We need to get ready for race day so we can get two GRP cars in the winner’s circle on Sunday.”
Like Beckman, Brittany also will be racing Saturday in the 2Fast/2Tasty Challenge, hoping to reverse the order of finish against Clay Millican, to whom she lost in the semifinals at Pomona.
