Scelzi's Oakley Dodge on Hot Streak in Sonoma

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 15 of 23
Fram-Autolite NHRA Nationals
Infineon Raceway
Sonoma, Calif.
Race Dates: Aug. 1-3, 2003



SONOMA, Calif. (Aug. 2, 2003) - Gary Scelzi's Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus
continued its hot streak after establishing a track speed record of 318.92
mph last night by setting the fastest speed of the final round of qualifying
today, 311.41 mph, under the heat of the Northern California sun.

Scelzi's elapsed time of 4.934 seconds was also fifth quickest of the
session. That final pass gave the Fresno, Calif., resident four out of four
rock-solid runs down the Infineon Raceway dragstrip for the weekend, but it
didn't help improve his position. Scelzi stayed in the No. 5 qualifying spot
by virtue of his 4.849-second elapsed time set on Friday night.

Despite spinning the tires briefly in the earlier round today, Scelzi still
managed to score a 4.949/305.70 pass.

"The Oakley Dodge! Man, what can you say when you've got the assets that we
have with the downforce and being able to play with this thing and we're not
even at maximum spoiler? That's a beautiful thing," said the three-time Top
Fuel champion still seeking his first Funny Car win. "We spun the tires
earlier today; we wanted to see where we could go. Consistency is the key to
this whole game and we've shown that in qualifying. Under different
conditions each day, we ran as quick as anyone else, and we ran faster than
anyone else. (Crew chief) Mike Neff has done one helluva job this weekend. I
can't tell you how pleased I am. I can't remember the last time that we went
down the race track four rounds in a row. If we can do that on Sunday we may
find out what those POWERade trophies look like."

Scelzi will meet his Oakley teammate Scotty Cannon in the first round of
final eliminations tomorrow. "When you're a multi-team owner this stuff
happens," he lamented. "We've got Scotty; we raced him before (in
Englishtown this year; Scelzi won). He's struggled a little bit in
qualifying, but we haven't. But race day you never know what can happen. The
good news is that there's going to be an Oakley car in the second round, and
you can't get to the second round unless you get past the first round.

"Whatever else happens, I feel really good about where we're at. We've been
looking good since the first round in Denver, even though we got beat. We
ran really well in Seattle. Unfortunate things happened there, but things
are looking pretty good here."