Gary Scelzi
The NHRA Softball Classic was a lot of fun. I haven’t played softball in 20 years. I actually wasn’t as rusty as I thought I would be, which is probably because of my sons, 11-year-old Dominic and six-year-old Giovanni, who both play baseball. I was a team coach, so in picking my team what I really did, since it was for charity, I just wanted to have my friends on the team, and I got the majority of them. Not that all of the players who participated aren’t my friends, but the closest of my friends were on my team.
But I didn’t realize how rusty everybody was until we had our first scrimmage and got pounded! After being embarrassed—and being drag racers we obviously have a lot of pride—we had another scrimmage and moved some people around and the improvement was immense. I think everybody felt better about themselves and their play.
I was really bummed when the actual game, which was supposed to take place on August 14 during the NHRA event in Reading, was rained out. The NHRA had raised so much money for DRAW, which supports race car drivers in need, and so many people came out and bought tickets and sat through the rain. And I felt with the other team talking all their smack we really had something for them! I think we could have surprised them. We are going to play the game. We’re not sure on the date. We’re trying to figure out a common place where we can get this done at. It’ll be somewhere between, I would think, the Charlotte and Pomona races.
Hopefully no one’s going to sprain an ankle or tear a ligament and wind up in the hospital. It was a lot of fun to get out and play in the scrimmages. It was so much different from the racing environment, which I think made it so exciting.
As far as the race at Reading, I have to be totally honest. I’m very disappointed with the year I’ve had. It’s the worst professional career I’ve had in 11 years. It’s no one’s fault. We’ve tried to gain an advantage on the other teams, but in the meantime it seems like we’ve lost our direction. Also, my crew chief Todd Okuhara came down with an illness, an inner ear infection, we lost one of our engine builders, and we lost our main clutch guy in a freak fire accident in Reading. It’s just been one of those years from hell. And it’s very hard to cope with such a bleak season.
But we’ve got Richard Hogan who is joining us. He’s going to come in and look over things. He’s worked with Alan Johnson for years and was Melanie Troxel’s crew chief in Top Fuel when she was with Don Schumacher Racing. They actually beat the U.S. Army Top Fuel car on several occasions. So he brings a wealth of knowledge, maybe not with Funny Car but in general with engine and clutch development. Hopefully with the crew guys we have in place—John Collins, Joe Veyette, Chris Lewis, Rich Pearson, Zak Seedroff and Mike Knudsen when he returns—we have the ability and understand the balance of Funny Car, where Richard Hogan might be lacking. So if he can help us refine our combination we can help with the balance of the car, and I think we could surprise a lot of people at the U.S. Nationals. And it’s been said before, if you’re not going to win a championship, if you can win the U.S. Nationals, that’s almost as good.
Also, on August 19, I had a great time filming at El Mirage with Tommy Kendall and the crew from “Test Drive” for their SPEED TV show. What a bitchin’ car! We drove a 2009 Dodge Challenger with TONS of power. It’s a whole different racing surface going down on the dry lake bed. And the name “Mirage” really comes into play there, because in the afternoon when the sun is bright, you can’t really focus on where you’re going. There’s no reference point to shut off. And with a big light inside the car because the cameraman was in the passenger seat, you can’t even look at the odometer to see how far you’ve gone. You could see the speed, but not the mileage.
It was definitely an exciting and different experience for me. It went really well. We got the car to 165 mph, and I feel it could have run 170 mph. But we ran out of room and had a heck of a cross wind, so we had a little bit of an issue there on how far we wanted to push it. I think the show will be really exciting for the viewers. It’s going to air on August 26 on SPEED. Those guys definitely put on a first-class production. I’m excited to see how it turned out. It was something different, and I would love to do something like that again.