Spectacular explosion for Scelzi; Cannon No. 6 in Vegas

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 4 of 23
SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals
The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Friday, April 4, 2003

AFTER TWO QUALIFYING SESSIONS

GARY SCELZI, OAKLEY TIME BOMB DODGE STRATUS R/T FUNNY CAR, survived a
spectacular explosion in tonight's run. Today's earlier pass, a 5.246-second
lap at 184.72 mph places him in No. 15 qualifying position. The body was
destroyed, but the chassis is OK. Tomorrow Scelzi will run the Dodge "Grab
Life by the Horns" body, which he debuted in Gainesville.

"It was really running well. It ran 3.29 e.t. at 263 mph at the one-eighth
mile and then the front end got light and it moved to the left quickly and I
yanked it right and I pedaled it. And that's the absolute wrong time in the
world to pedal it, because it's got 77 gallons a minute of nitromethane
going in it and it lit all the fuel off when I got back on it, and it went
kaboom. But your natural instinct is to do a quick pedal and yank it back in
the groove and try to finish the run. But that's not exactly where to do it.
But your instincts take over. I think we found that the front end was kind
of floating and it's been doing it for a while; we need some more spoiler in
the front. I think that kind of proved our theory. Everything is fine. We
got another body; we will have to run the Dodge body. The car is fine; we'll
just put another motor in it, put all new ignition on it, make sure
everything is fine and go back and run it tomorrow and try to put it in the
field." IS THIS YOUR FIRST SPECTACULAR FUNNY CAR EXPLOSION? "I had one in
Houston last year in the Toyota, but it wasn't as good as this one. This one
was a lot better; there's nothing left of the body. The thing that I like
about a Funny Car is that if this had happened in a dragster it probably
would have taken a rear tire, took the wing, and the car would have broken
into pieces and you would have been helpless. The thing about the Funny Car
is when it did blow up I had a steering wheel in my hand, I had brakes, I
had a fire bottle. At least I had a shot and the shot paid off. I didn't hit
anything; I got the car stopped and the car's fine."

SCOTTY CANNON, OAKLEY "SLEEP TIGHT...OAKLEY DESIGN IS AWAKE" FUNNY CAR, is
No. 6 qualifier, with another consistent pass of 4.859 at 321.73 mph.

"I don't want to sound like I'm not happy, but we were actually trying to
make the car run better than it did. Are we disappointed? Absolutely not. Am
I proud of the guys? One hundred ten percent. Just take me out of the
equation. I want all my guys to have the credit. Yeah, I drive and I help to
make decisions, but that's not my part. I'm just proud of the guys. The
motor's looking good. The motor's got nine runs on it. We went a .92 in
Gainesville first round and got the bugs out. Every run since then has been
quicker than a .92. so that's five runs: four runs in the .80s and one .92.
And that's going from one end of the United States to the other. That's the
way we look at it. And having a new team and all our guys together, we're
gelling in a lot of ways. A lot of people don't realize, we had our first
team meeting this morning, since we've had our whole team together. Like
everybody sits down, airs things out, tells each other how they feel. We've
been working so hard, night and day, trying to get this car fixed. We don't
want anybody feeling sorry for us, but they just don't realize how many
hours we've put in. A lot of guys would have quit. We're actually racing our
old car now. I'm happy for the guys, I'm happy for myself, I'm happy for Jim
(Jannard, Oakley's Mad Scientist), Don (Schumacher) and all the sponsors,
that they're actually getting to see some results. the most impressive thing
to me personally is it made five runs down the track, and nine times out of
10 if you go five runs in a row, and run that good, and you keep doing it,
you can win some rounds and win some races."