Championship Drag Racing

ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals
Las Vegas
(Oct. 23-26)

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Gary Scelzi Oakley Dodge Stratus R/T Funny Car

Reports: Sunday Saturday Friday Pre-race

Las Vegas, Sunday: Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus driver Gary Scelzi had little to complain about in today's Funny Car final eliminations of the ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals after struggling in qualifying - except perhaps not beating Tony Pedregon in the semifinal round.

Always a team player, the No. 10 qualifier first disposed of No. 4 qualifier John Force in the first round (4.879/321.88 vs. 4.920/313.88), which gave his Don Schumacher Racing teammate Whit Bazemore some breathing room, as Force had an opportunity to pass Bazemore for second in the championship going into this event. This was Scelzi's third win this season against Force in four meetings.

In the second round he dismissed Tim Wilkerson (4.909/320.58 vs. 4.944/307.51) with a stellar .028 reaction time to match the .026 he used to beat Force.

The semifinal round provided him another opportunity to help his teammate Bazemore as he was paired against Bazemore's rival for the Funny Car championship Tony Pedregon. With lane choice, Scelzi launched with a .059 reaction time to Pedregon's .041, but he barely reached the 300-ft. mark before he struck the tires. He tried to pedal it, but it was all she wrote as Pedregon took the win with a 4.881 at 310.13 mph to Scelzi's 5.976/216.97.

With Ron Capps going out in the first round, Scelzi is now tied with Capps in sixth with 1084 points.

"We had a great day today," said Scelzi. "We're nipping on Capps' heels for sixth and we're sort of there."

"We came from the rubble. We had a lot of problems in qualifying and we came back and we knocked Force off. We had low E.T. of that round and l ran a great second round. We had just a little bit too much steam in it for Tony Pedregon. I'm not sure why it did what it did, but for whatever the reason, we didn't get the win. We made it to the semi, so it was a good day for the Oakley Dodge."

"It smoked the tires right away," he said of his match against Pedregon. "It just had too much power. It's just one of those things. I pedaled it and it recovered, which is a good thing. This means Mike (Neff, crew chief) was really close on the tune-up, because normally when you pedal and it smokes the tires again you're way over center, but it did recover. Tony was out there a long way so I rode it out for a little bit, and when I saw him way out there I just shut it off.

"We're happy," he continued. "We're going to test here tomorrow. We're going to try some new things for next year and our program is in great shape and I'm excited. I also feel a lot better after having a week off."

Las Vegas, Saturday: Gary Scelzi and his Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus Funny Car team qualified No. 10 for the ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals, the penultimate round of the 2003 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, by virtue of a 4.916/313.51 pass in today's third qualifying session.

In his final qualifying pass he coasted across the finish line in 9.711 seconds at 88.25 mph

"We have been running way lean because the air is so dry there are no water grains in it," he said. "And that was one of the reasons I over-revved it in the burnout last night. You speed the blower up because you're at altitude, but you're in the desert so you need more fuel. So we made the change on that last run and it was better, but we still didn't have enough on it.

"Tomorrow we should be back to normal. The tune-up should be what we want it to be, and we're going to chase Force. And hopefully he'll be seeing the back of the Oakley Dodge like he's seen twice this year."

Scelzi will face John Force in the first round of final eliminations, whom he's beat two out of the three times they've met this season.

Las Vegas, Friday: Following a stout 4.956-second pass at 311. 92 mph in the first round (fastest speed of that round) Gary Scelzi had an uncharacteristic miscue in the second qualifying session and traveled the quarter-mile in only 5.053 seconds at 285.65 mph. This resulted in a No. 10 qualifying effort, not the No. 1 he was aiming for.

"I over-revved it in the burnout," he said. "I'm not hiding it. "This Oakley Dodge is peppy. We were going to run for the pole and I just got it too high in the burnout and it's hard to pull back on the throttle. I just blew it. I hurt a piston on the burnout. When I backed up and hit the gas it knocked the piston out of it. It had seven cylinders all the way down the race track. It cost us an oildown and it was not a pretty picture for the driver.

"I don't make a lot of mistakes, but this was a dumb one. So I get to wear the dunce cap."

Las Vegas, pre-race: Now that Gary Scelzi is well rested after a string of seven weekends of rainouts and racing in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car category, his goal is to conquer The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, where he hasn't had the greatest luck in the past.

In April at The Strip, his Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus lived up to its name when it was destroyed by an explosion during qualifying, resulting in a DNQ for the Fresno, Calif., resident. That was a downer, but since then he, along with his crew chief Mike Neff, has mastered the art of speed, demolishing one track record after another, and is now tickling the 330-mph mark.

At Chicago's Route 66 Raceway in late September Scelzi re-wrote his own national top-speed record by taking his Oakley Dodge rocketship to a new national record of 329.18 mph, re-establishing himself as the fastest Funny Car pilot on Earth.

The weather conditions at this time of year in Las Vegas may not be conducive to breaking national records, so Scelzi's primary goal is to first make the 16-car field by qualifying high in Friday's first session, then go for low E.T. in the night session. After that, his job is to move past Ron Capps for sixth place in the Funny Car championship. Scelzi is just 49 points behind.

"The Strip has never has been a great place for me, which means it's time for that to change," said Scelzi, who has notched 25 Top Fuel wins and one Funny Car win, but not one of them in Las Vegas.

"The first thing we're going to do is to try to get this car qualified in the first shot (Friday afternoon), like we do every race. We ran one of the fastest speeds ever to half track in April, when we didn't qualify. We ran like 263 mph, which is pretty incredible."

"The only time we're going to be able to run that magical low E.T. number and the big speed I think is in Friday night qualifying, because the air gets cooler. It's been in the 90-degree range this week and it's almost like we've got to use our summer tune-up. At Infineon, Seattle and some of these other places where it gets hot like that we seem to have a pretty good handle on it."

Lane choice in final eliminations may be a factor, said Scelzi. "The left lane's got a bump in it that's pretty good, because of the walkway underneath. That contributed to my troubles in April, I think. So lane choice could become a factor here on Sunday. It could turn into a one-lane race track."

With his chances of moving into the top five in the Funny Car championship standings dashed, Scelzi is looking towards 2004 and the winter months to get back on track after a grueling second half of the 2003 season.

"I'm excited about next year," he said. "But I'm also pretty tired of all the rainouts. This week and a half that I've had off was well-earned and well-deserved. I'm glad the guys got to rest and I got to rest. It's given me a little better outlook, a little better personality. I was starting to get pretty rundown, pretty cranky."

What does a Funny Car driver do when he has a week off? "I've been playing with the go-karts with (son) Dominic and spending a lot of time with my kids. I'm also trying to get back on the same page at Scelzi Enterprises, and find out what's going on there because I've been away from it for so long. I'm just trying to get acquainted with what's going on again because that's what I'm going to be doing in my 'off' season – working back at the company."

But first he's got a little conquering to do.