NHRA

Dallas: Gary Scelzi Saturday summary

IN A NAIL-BITER, SCELZI QUALIFIES NO. 10 IN TEXAS ENNIS, Texas (Sept. 23, 2006) - Following the first two rounds of Funny Car qualifying for the O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals, reigning NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car champion Gary Scelzi ...

Edited: Dec 11, 2006, 4:20 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

IN A NAIL-BITER, SCELZI QUALIFIES NO. 10 IN TEXAS

ENNIS, Texas (Sept. 23, 2006) - Following the first two rounds of Funny Car qualifying for the O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals, reigning NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car champion Gary Scelzi found himself on the outside looking in, not qualified for the 16-car field with a 9.819-second pass at 85.81 mph and a 7.856/102.70.

In today's third attempt, driving the special-edition Valspar House of Kolor body on his Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T, Scelzi squeaked into the field in No. 14 with a 4.987/272.72, but following a rain delay which cooled down the track conditions, he was back on the sidelines again after two pairs of cars had run as he staged for the final round of qualifying.

On a conservative pass and with a loud sigh of relief heard from his crew, Scelzi made it into the field in No. 10, posting a 4.856-second elapsed time at 321.04 mph.

"It wasn't a nail-biter until we pulled it up in the water an they said that we weren't in the show," said Scelzi. "Then it was a nail-biter.

"The first round today it ran a lot better than we thought because it cleaned the teeth off the blower belt and it actually quit at about 1100 feet, so it should have run about a 4.92, which would have gotten us in where we needed to be.

"But if we had been in the show before the last qualifying run we were going to stand on it and try to run a mid-.70 like we tried last night. And I think the track would have held it today, but we couldn't take the chance. We couldn't take the chance of shaking the tire, or smoking the tire, so we just went at it and ran the simple. 85. It ran 320 mph, it didn't hurt anything, the 60-ft. increments are getting better, reaction times are getting better, so now we can do our jobs tomorrow.

"Zippy (crew chief Mike Neff) made me a promise. I'm not going to tell you what it is unless we win."

Scelzi faces Scott Kalitta in first round of eliminations on Sunday.

-credit: dsr

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Dallas: Tommy Johnson Jr Saturday summary

Next article Dallas: Hillary Will Saturday summary

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

How levelling the playing field isn’t antithetical to the principles of F1

Formula 1

How levelling the playing field isn’t antithetical to the principles of F1

The closest finish in MotoGP history: Toni Elias over Valentino Rossi 20 years ago

MotoGP

MGP MotoGP

Portuguese GP

47 min

The closest finish in MotoGP history: Toni Elias over Valentino Rossi 20 years ago

When will Mercedes become F1 world champions in 2026?

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

1 h

When will Mercedes become F1 world champions in 2026?

Jesse Love barely holds off Sam Mayer for NASCAR O'Reilly win at Phoenix

NASCAR O'Reilly

NOAP NASCAR O'Reilly

Phoenix II

7 h

Jesse Love barely holds off Sam Mayer for NASCAR O'Reilly win at Phoenix

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts