Scelzi breaks track records for No. 1 at Gateway on Friday

2004 NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
Round 12 of 23
SEARS CRAFTSMAN NHRA NATIONALS
GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
MADISON, ILL.
Race Dates: June 25-27, 2004

MADISON, ILL. (June 25, 2004) - Under near perfect conditions at Gateway
International Raceway's drag strip tonight, Funny Car track records were
being broken left and right. In today's first qualifying session, Gary
Scelzi was No. 1 qualifier for a moment in the HEMI-powered Oakley Dodge
Stratus (4.894/316.23) until his teammate Whit Bazemore eclipsed that pass
with an even quicker and faster one for No. 1 with a track record of
4.850/317.79.

Not to be outdone, Scelzi poured it on in the second qualifying session,
demolishing both ends of the track record (which, earlier in this round, had
been broken first by Cruz Pedregon, then by Tommy Johnson Jr.) with a
4.758-second pass at 329.34 mph for the top spot.

"Incredible," he said. "We don't get to run at night a lot. We have our
night sessions but we don't get to stand on it. And this is one of the times
that we've come to St. Louis that I can ever remember that it's at night,
and there's not a lot of humidity, the race track is cool, temperatures are
cool and you can just jump all over it.

"Fortunately for us we had a really good run on the first run, so that set
us up for tonight. 'Let's just go see how big we can swing the bat.' And
(crew chief) Mike Neff and (co-crew chief) Dan Olson were teasing me. 'We're
going for the fence, we're going for the fence.' they said. And three or
four times they said, 'You'd better have your elbows up, Baby, because
you're going to haul ass tonight.'

"They didn't lie. When you hit the gas on these things at night it takes
your breath away and even though this track has decent lighting the orange
outside of the windows from the header flames are just roof high so that
catches your peripheral vision and you're fighting this thing trying to keep
it in the middle of that groove, and you can't see the groove. All you can
see is the scoreboard and you're trying to keep it off the wall. It's
exciting as hell. 

"I didn't know it ran that good but normally when our car runs big speed the
clutch just slams and then it just sets you back, and it never did that. It
was just a great smooth run all the way through, which is what we've been
trying to do all year long."

Two more qualifying sessions are scheduled for tomorrow at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.