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Many drivers have been successful campaigning in Top Fuel, but few ever reach the heights that Gary Beck did during his stint from 1972 to 1986. Beck not only won the 1972 U.S. Nationals in his first Top Fuel national event appearance, but he was also the first racer to break the Top Fuel run barriers in the 5.60s, 5.50s, 5.40s, and 5.30s. As the winner of two NHRA Top Fuel titles, Beck is still ranked 9th on the all-time Top Fuel wins list.
Beck's career in organized drag racing began when he and longtime friend Gaines Markley, with whom he had attended school from kindergarten through high school, joined the Seattlebased Emperors Car Club in 1958.
The club eventually disbanded, but Beck and Markley stayed in competition with a DeSoto-powered altered and later transplanted the engine into a dragster chassis in 1965. The car was upgraded to a supercharged-gas Chrysler Hemi three years later. Both racers took turns driving the car, and Beck's work as a mechanic set the stage for the driving success he would enjoy later on. "I learned from the trenches on how to work on highperformance engines and chassis," said Beck. "Although I enjoyed driving very much, I got a lot more excited about making a car go fast."
After the pair moved up to a BB/Gas Dragster for Division 6 Super Eliminator competition in 1968, Beck became the fulltime driver when Markley got a ride with a Top Fuel team. The car was later sold to the team of Don Sorenson and Graham Light, now NHRA's senior vice president of racing operations, after Beck ended his partnership with Markley and moved to Edmonton, Alta., then a hotbed of Top Fuel racing. "There must have been seven or eight Top Fuel teams in Edmonton at the time," said Beck.
After joining the local Capitol City Hot Rod Club, Beck hooked up with racer Ken McLean and backer Bob Lawrence to run the Joker AA/FD that they had just purchased from the Norton, Kalivoda & Hamlin team. Beck,...