Richmond: Gary Scelzi Saturday notes

SCELZI SNAGS NO. 13 IN VIRGINIA QUALIFYING

DINWIDDIE, Va. (Oct. 11, 2008) - Gary Scelzi continues to enjoy driving the Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car in these last remaining races of the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series. The four-time NHRA champion qualified it in No. 13 for this weekend's third annual Virginia NHRA Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park, the first of the final three events of the year.

Scelzi's quickest pass of 4.081 seconds (his career-best racing to 1000 feet) at 299.13 mph came in the third session today, which followed Friday's two laps of 4.159/293.86 (No. 13) and 4.083/301.00 (No. 11). His final attempt under nearly ideal fall conditions produced a 4.701/168.47 (No. 13).

"That's three out of four," said Scelzi, the defending event champion. "Richard (Hogan, crew chief) wanted to see exactly where we could go and where we couldn't go and we found that out. The car's been consistent, it's running better than it's run all year. We checked some of the numbers from earlier in the year when we ran .70s and it's ahead of that. So, it looks promising."

Scelzi faces Melanie Troxel in the opening round of eliminations on Sunday. Both are not in the Countdown to 1 playoffs. "We'll just go up there and shoot our shot, both lanes are equal, try to make some noise, and spend the day in Virginia and see if we can't repeat what we did last year," he added.

-credit: dsr