Las Vegas: Gary Scelzi final summary

SCELZI OUT IN VEGAS OPENING ROUND

LAS VEGAS (April 15, 2007) - Four-time NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series champion Gary Scelzi faced his good friend Jim Head in the opening round of Funny Car eliminations in today's SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals.

Driving the Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T, Scelzi launched first with a .104 reaction time to Head's .122, but relinquished the round to his pal when he lost traction early and coasted to a 5.157-second lap at 307.09 mph. Head cruised to the victory with a 4.846/313.66.

"Unfortunately, when we started the car, the Racepak computer went dead, and we couldn't tell what it was idling at rpm-wise," explained Scelzi. "We couldn't tell anything, so we unplugged and plugged it back in, and nothing happened. We did the burnout and backed up, it was completely dead, and we went to download the computer (after the run) and got absolutely no data. So, we don't know if there was a problem, what happened. It was one of those unknown phenomena, I guess.

"It was pretty upsetting and pretty frustrating. We made it three out of four rounds in qualifying. There was no reason it should have smoked the tires today. So, we'll run here tomorrow and try some things and hopefully find out what happened. Other than that, we'll just go to Atlanta."

Scelzi is fifth in Funny Car point standings following today's results.

Next up is Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Ga., April 27-29.

-credit: dsr