Gary Scelzi and the Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car team suffered a first-round loss today at the NHRA Nationals at Pacific Raceways.
In a head-to-head match-up against eventual event winner Tony Bartone, Scelzi’s car went up in smoke at the hit of the throttle (10.406/69.77), while Bartone, who scorched the timing lights with a .004-of-a-second reaction time (.000 is perfect), captured the victory with a 4.181/298.01.
“It smoked the tires right at the hit,” said the four-time NHRA world champion Scelzi. “I have no clue why. It acted like it had two Hemis in it. I think everybody on the Mopar/Oakley Dodge team is a little bit stunned. So far we haven’t found anything wrong. It’s pretty upsetting.
“You can’t be upset, but you can’t do it over and being upset is not going to fix it, so we’ll go to Sonoma and hope somebody finds something or somehow we get this thing on the right track because right now this is pretty devastating.”
Did lack of lane choice contribute to the loss for the No. 12 qualifier? “Well, I really don’t believe that lane choice was an issue,” he said. “I think most guys ran pretty decent in both lanes. I didn’t see any difference. Our teammate Cory Mac (McClenathan) won right in front of us. I know they run that car hard and it didn’t smoke the tires. There’s no excuses. We’re not running well and we don’t know why. There’s a problem; we can’t find it, but we need to.”
Next up is the final event of the three-race Western Swing, the FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., July 25-27.
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