Scelzi runs fastest Funny Car speed ever, advances to 2nd round in E'Town

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
K&N Filters NHRA SuperNationals - Round 8 of 23
Old Bridge Township Raceway Park - Englishtown, N.J.
Sunday, May 18, 2003


FINAL ELIMINATIONS

SCELZI SETS FASTEST SPEED EVER FOR FUNNY CAR; ADVANCES TO SECOND ROUND AT
E'TOWN

ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. (May 18, 2003) -- Gary Scelzi rocketed his Oakley Dodge
Stratus R/T Funny Car to the fastest Funny Car speed ever recorded, 326.95
miles an hour, in the first round of final eliminations, to defeat his
teammate Scotty Cannon. Scelzi posted an elapsed time of 4.831 seconds to
Cannon's tire-smoking 12.543/75.91, and advanced to the second round to face
Tony Pedregon.

Scelzi would have liked nothing better than to beat points leader Pedregon,
which would help his teammate Whit Bazemore, second in the standings, in the
points chase. He couldn't do Baze the favor or back up his speed for a
national record, as Scelzi smoked the tires at the hit of the throttle.
Pedregon cruised to a 4.799/322.04 victory.

With his No. 8 qualifying position and advancing to the second round, Scelzi
has moved into the top 10 in the POWERade Drag Racing Series point
standings, and now stands No. 9.

"They don't give us any points for speed, but it's great for Dodge and Terry
DeKoninck (Mopar aerodynamics engineer) and all the other engineers at
Dodge," Scelzi said. "It makes us feel good about all the work that they've
done in the wind tunnel and all the work that Lee Beard (Bazemore's crew
chief) and Mike Neff (Scelzi's crew chief) have done. We knew it could do
those things. We thought it would happen sooner, but it did happen. It
outran the other guys by a bunch, and that's what we've been trying to do -
hurt their feelings.

The left lane proved to be least favorite as the day wore on. "We lost lane
choice and that was very critical," said Scelzi. "When I was backing up from
the burnout the tires were picking up pieces of concrete and evidently the
tires were still not real clean, although the guys tried to wipe them.
That's what happens when you lose lane choice.

"A lot of this plays into the factor of going in deep -- trying to shorten
the race track. If I hadn't gone deep against Scotty there's a good chance
we could have had lane choice against Tony Pedregon and put him over there.
It's one of those things. It's unfortunate; it happens. If your aunt had a
beard she'd be your uncle, most of the time.

"But our car does what it's supposed to do. It's reacting right. The speed
thing is not a fluke. It'll continue to do that. We took one on the chin
today and we didn't lose to a crummy car, that's for sure."

Facing your teammate is never easy, and this was the first match-up for the
Oakley duo since they became teammates at the beginning of 2003. "Scotty and
I are friends," commented Scelzi. "We knew we'd have an Oakley car in the
second round; we didn't know who it was going to be. There's no games with
Scotty. It's just like racing Whit. Sometimes it's almost too relaxing,
because you know there's not going to be any hassle. But there are bragging
rights, so I'm up one to Scotty.

"The good news is we're no longer out of the top 10. We've cracked it and
we're No. 9 and we're hopefully moving our way up the ladder. It's a
beautiful thing."