Gary Scelzi Benches Himself; But he'll soon be back, he says.(Professional race driver, Gary Scelzi)(Brief Article)

There was a drag race in Englishtown, New Jersey, this past weekend, but Gary Scelzi, one of the sport's biggest stars, wasn't in it. And the 25-time NHRA national event winner wasn't too happy about it. ``I've been driving race cars since I was 16. I'm 41 now. This feeling is new for me, and it's hard to deal with,'' says Scelzi.

Scelzi (say ``Sell-zee'') and his team, Alan Johnson Racing, who have taken three Top Fuel championships in the past five years, landed a deal with Toyota to move over to Funny Car at the start of the season and have struggled horribly ever since, prompting Scelzi's self-imposed but temporary benching. ``Our original plan all along was to run two Celicas,'' says Scelzi. (One was slated for Scelzi; the other for teammate Bruce Sarver, who ran a Funny Car for Alan Johnson last year.) ``With September 11 and all the other sponsorship problems, it didn't work out that way. We were able to only run the one car. At Gainesville, we were runner-up, then at Bristol and Atlanta we didn't qualify. We've been all over the place.'' With an untried body and just one set of data to work from, the team was unable to find the setup, or Scelzi to find his stride with the unfamiliar car. ``Between Alan and me, we decided that the best thing to do was to step out and put Bruce in,'' Scelzi says. ``The cars we have were built for Bruce, and I never could get comfortable.''

If it's hard to imagine a professional race driver ever parking himself, it's harder still to associate a Funny Car with the word ``comfortable,'' for it might well be the most malevolent beast in all of motorsports. A Funny Car has all the 6000 horsepower of its big brother, the Top Fueler, but it's crammed into a 125-inch wheelbase, less than half that of the dragster. So it's nearly as fast, yet twice as evil. A quarter-mile in a Funny Car takes less than five seconds, with speeds often eclipsing 320 mph, much of it performed sideways, due to its stubby chassis and unstable aerodynamics. Consider this: The first 60 feet in a Funny Car takes about nine-tenths of a second. A little more than a second later, the car has traveled 330 feet. At around 3.3 seconds, it has covered 660 feet, and now it's going 260 mph. And not uncommonly, especially when the proper tuning combination is not in hand and the throttle must be ``pedaled'' to get the car down the track, it's done with parts of the vehicle exploding or on fire, which for Scelzi has been an all too-frequent occurrence. The Toyota's carbon fiber body is riddled with patches from engine mishaps. ``You have to be totally at home in these cars,'' says Sarver, who has successfully driven both Top Fuel cars and the wild things they call Funny Cars. ``If you have to think about what you're doing, it's too late.''

To get Scelzi the proper fit and feel would require rebuilding the team's three chassis, which would set them back even further than they are now, he and Johnson have decided. So for now, Scelzi is out and Sarver is in... but that's not the end of the story. Two new chassis, their cockpits and roll cages specially tailored for Scelzi, are being prepared even now, and in the coming weeks ...