Photography: John Force Racing / Gary Nastase / Auto Imagery
INDIANAPOLIS (Aug. 29, 2025) – Brittany Force and Jack Beckman topped the leaderboard in Top Fuel and Funny Car, respectively, after Friday night’s first of five rounds of qualifying for the NHRA Mission Foods Cornwell Quality Tools U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.
Force, already with four No. 1 Qualifier efforts at the U.S, Nationals (2019, 2021, 2022, 2024), established the low elapsed time of the session in the Cornwell Quality Tools Top Fuel Dragster with a run of 3.666 seconds and, in doing so, reset the track speed record at 339.79 mph. Beckman, a two-time U.S. Nationals Champion (2015, 2020), is the provisional No. 1 lap in the Brute Force PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant Chevrolet SS Funny Car, with a lap of 3.8656 seconds at 332.26 mph.
Reigning 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Funny Car Champion and U.S. Nationals Champion Austin Prock was on a good lap but lost traction before the timing lights, slowing to a run of 4.084 seconds at 238.17 mph.
Quote from Brittany Force, driver of the Cornwell Quality Tools Top Fuel Dragster:
“It was a solid start for this Cornwell Quality Tools team We’re excited to be here at the Cornwell Quality Tools U.S. Nationals and put a ‘66’ on the board right out of the gate. I climbed out of my car after that killer run and got to sign the board that signifies our team clinching a spot in the Countdown, which is really exciting. This team’s been working so hard all season long so it’s great to get locked in. Our focus now is one round at a time, turn four on win lights Monday, win this thing, and then it’s game on.
“The run felt fast. The night runs always do because everything’s pitch black in your car, you can’t see anything. You have the lights going down the racetrack that, for whatever reason, makes it seem faster. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s so dark, and you’re not used to it, but it takes you outside of the comfort zone that you’re normally in. But yeah, it did feel fast.”
Quote from Jack Beckman, driver of the Brute Force PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant Chevrolet SS Funny Car:
“It was a great lap. When I saw Capps run that ‘87’, I thought probably the left lane was the slightly better of the two, it was maybe fortuitous that we got that one on the Friday night session. I was talking to a PEAK training group today, and I told them, a lot of whom are first-timers to the track, that are out here today, that if it doesn’t go down the racetrack on the first run, it’s not a huge deal. We have runs to recover from it. But this is Indianapolis … we’ve got the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge on Saturday, the Funny Car Call Out on Sunday and then race on Monday. So this run just sets the tone for the crew guys.
“I don’t know that that’ll hold. We’ll see what the conditions look like for the next couple of days, but it was a fantastic start for the PEAK SQUAD. The car seemed like it was trying to turn the tires early, and a lot of times when you steer early, you spend a couple hundred more feet, trying to settle down from that so you don’t oscillate going down the racetrack. But it settled right down the lane from that point on. That’s about as good an opening lap as you’re going to get out here. Everybody gets to go home and sleep well tonight, because we got a job to do starting tomorrow.”
Quote from Austin Prock, driver of the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS Funny Car:
“They do the best they can with the lighting here, but these Funny Cars are just hard to see out of sometimes. I had it painted right in the center of the groove but there’s a little bit of a bump down there, I think, and it was just enough to knock the tire off. So, it was trucking but we just ran out of race track down there. So, we’ll adapt, the hotter it gets throughout the weekend that the track’s going to be even worse down there. We’ll dial her back and we’ll be right there. I mean, we were going to run Low ET if it would have made it. I would have liked to see what it would have run to the lights. Not a bad start but not a great one, but we’ll get them tomorrow.”
Track & TV Schedules
Qualifying continues Saturday, Aug. 30, for the Cornwell Quality Tools NHRA U.S. Nationals will include two rounds at 12:30 and 3:15 p.m. ET, and the final two rounds on Sunday, Aug. 31, at 12 and 2:45 p.m. Final eliminations are scheduled for 10 a.m. ET on Monday, Sept 1.
Television coverage includes qualifying action on FS1 at 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, and eliminations at 12 p.m. on FS1 on Monday, shifting to FOX at 2 p.m.
The first round of the Funny Car All-Star Callout takes place at 12:45 p.m. ET on Sunday, Aug. 31, with the semifinals at 2:15 p.m. and the final round at 4 p.m. A special broadcast of the Callout takes place on FOX at 5 p.m. ET on Sunday.
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