Reading2: Gary Scelzi Saturday summary

Scelzi qualifies no. 10 in rain-delayed Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals

READING, Pa. (Oct. 4, 2003) - Only one of two qualifying session was completed today in the rain-delayed Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, after rain once again came close to washing out the entire day. After failing to qualify in the one round completed in the first visit here Sept. 12, Gary Scelzi was focused on making it into the Funny Car field in his Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus, and it worked. He ended up No. 10 with a 4.883/318.47 pass.

"We put in a setup that we thought would get it to go down the race track. We didn't try to run anything fancy," said the three-time Top Fuel champion. "We just wanted to go to the end because of the weather. And it did exactly what we wanted it to do. Again, it just shows that (crew chief) Mike Neff knows where he's at with the combination right now. He can make it do whatever he wants. And that's what we tried to do, a mid- to high .80. We ran an .88 and that's perfect."

Scelzi's teammate Whit Bazemore, who's vying for the Funny Car championship with Tony Pedregon, did not qualify. "If there was a way that we can pull us and make us not qualify and put Bazemore in I would do it in a second," said Scelzi. "It's pretty devastating when your teammate has a shot at the World Championship and he doesn't qualify.

"Hopefully we can go do some damage tomorrow, knock somebody out early and maybe go on and win the race. We can't sit here and mope about Baze not getting in. It's just unfortunate. We're going to go stand on it a little bit more tomorrow with the Oakley Dodge. We know where we're at, we'll try to run a low .80, try to win the first round and go from there."