Scelzi makes Funny Car field in final try

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
2007 NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
Round 19 of 23
COUNTDOWN TO FOUR (Round 2 of 4)
O'Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals
Memphis (Tenn.) Motorsports Park
Sept. 14-16, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Judy Stropus, 203-438-0501; cell 203-243-2438;
jstropus@earthlink.net

SCELZI MAKES FUNNY CAR FIELD IN FINAL TRY

MILLINGTON, Tenn. (Sept. 15, 2007) - Gary Scelzi had a tough outing in
qualifying for the O'Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals. He and the
Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T team endured mechanical glitches and body
changes to finally make it into the 16-car field with a 4.867-second elapsed
time at 315.34 mph, set in the final run.

His previous passes were a 4.954/301.74 (good for No. 8 at at the time), a
5.185/208.59 (No. 16) and a 6.891/122.01 (DQ).

"Finally, nothing broke or fell off, nothing stupid happened," he said of
the final pass. "We left a little bit on the table, but that's OK. We had to
get the thing in the show and Todd (Okuhara, crew chief, along with Phil
Shuler) was shooting for an .87 and I'm glad it ended up with an .86,
because that helped. We're in the show, we get to race.

"The Countdown is a big thing," added Scelzi, who is seventh in the
Countdown to Four, "and we need to make things happen tomorrow. You can't do
it when you're not in. We're in, don't care where at. We'll just go out and
do it tomorrow."

As for the mechanical issues, "It broke a Heim joint on the barrel valve,
which was aluminum," Scelzi explained. "I'm not sure why we ever had an
aluminum Heim joint there, but I guess we're the only ones that run them,
and it broke. It was fairly new. I think it was new at the Indy test
session, which is not something that normally breaks.

"But, with our luck right now, it broke, so now we've got steel Heim joints
in there and everything is good. We know that won't break, and I think we've
got everything the way it's supposed to be.

"Also, we changed bodies because when that arm fell off the barrel valve the
motor went lean and blew the burst panels and cracked the windshield and the
doghouse and we didn't have a spare set for this body, so we had to make it
fit. It'll be OK for tomorrow. The guys ran out of time to make everything
fit.

"So, if we have a little bit of luck tomorrow, we can go out and whip some
ass."

Scelzi faces Gary Densham in the opening round of eliminations on Sunday.

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