Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Ex-Top Fuel champ Scelzi happy with Funny Car

Thursday, Feb. 20, 2003 | 10:15 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

Gary Scelzi may be 10th in Funny Car points but he is on cloud nine after his first race with Don Schumacher Racing in the Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus Funny Car.

Even though Scelzi suffered a first-round loss to Ron Capps in the season-opening NHRA Winternationals at Pomona Raceway, the three-time Top Fuel champion turned Funny Car racer couldn't be happier about the car's performance at Pomona.

"We're 10th in points, which is great," Scelzi said. "It's hard to be 10th in points. What saved us was our qualifying effort at Pomona and we just had a miscue first round. I got beat on a holeshot but it wasn't like I was eating a sandwich on the starting line.

"My 60-foot time was my best, at .900, and I was already three hundredths ahead at that point. But it smoked the tires and I pedaled it. I hadn't had to pedal it yet, so it was a good learning experience for me."

What Scelzi also learned was that he has the equipment to win Funny Car races in his first full season in the category. "I learned that I think I can go down any race track," he said. "I made four solid runs in a row (in Pomona). And knowing what I did wrong on the one run where it got out of the groove, I think that I can drive this Dodge pretty much anywhere we go.

"I think I'm comfortable enough to win a drag race right now. I don't have the laps I had in the Top Fuel dragster but I feel that I'm good enough to win."

Scelzi will get a chance to put that theory to the test this weekend when the NHRA Powerade Drag Racing Series heads to Firebird International Raceway in Chandler, Ariz., for the Checker Schucks Kragen NHRA Nationals. As a rookie in 1997, Scelzi earned his second Top Fuel victory at Firebird after winning the season-opening race at Pomona.

"It was only the second pro race I'd been in and I won it," Scelzi said. "It was pretty exciting because we didn't qualify very well and I think people thought the Pomona win was a fluke. Then, during eliminations, we found our problem and came on really strong against Kenny Bernstein in the final. I believe we ran a 4.63 to his 4.64; it was pretty memorable and pretty exciting."

"I think in the big picture, (Pomona) was important because that's four round wins," Dixon said. "We have more round wins than anybody else right now but they have to total up if you want to win the championship.

"It was a great start and I am really thrilled about it. Does that give us an advantage this weekend? Not really, because the only advantage we have is that we have the most points going into this race. That really doesn't help you at all during the weekend. It will help you in November and we are going to try and get some more help this weekend."

Dixon became the first Top Fuel driver in NHRA history to win back-to-back Winternationals.

Krisher had a category-best nine No. 1 qualifying positions, including the first four of the year, the top speed at nine events and the quickest elapsed time at five races.