Will the Real Gary Scelzi Please Stand Up?
The adventure continues for one of drag racing’s true characters
By Joe Sherk
Photo by Roger Richards and Brian Wood

The nun walked through the vacant staging lanes at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, pausing occasionally to turn and wave, acknowledging greetings from people along the way.

Stopping near the base of the media tower, the nun put down a basket she'd been carrying and lit a cigarette.  That may have seemed odd, but things got a little stranger.  A closer look at the person in the habit revealed it no nun at all, but a mustachioed Funny Car driver.

Turns out Gary Scelzi was taking full advantage of Halloween morning while preparing to go trick-or-treating at the behest of the ESPN2 TV crew shooting a segment of Scelzi Says for NHRA2Day. That wasn't candy in the basket, either.  Scelzi had been trick-or-treating for beer -- not that he planned to have a breakfast Bud prior to eliminations, but you always want to have one on ice  when racing concludes -- and money.  "Food or anything else I could get," he added.

It was a lighthearted look at All Hallows Eve in Sin City, and who else but Scelzi to be the foil?  First round was less than three hours away, yet there he was, playing the role like it would be nominated for an award. 

And it could've, according to Scelzi.  "I think that was one of the best 'Scelzi Says' that we did last year.  If there had been a top 10 list, it would've been on top."

Few drivers would've forsaken their pre-race routines for such folderol.  Not Scelzi, who says he's having as much fun now as he ever has.  "But I make it that way.  I'm kind of a goofball and I have a lot of fun.  All these guys out here are my friends, so I'm able to get away with a little more than the next guy would if I called somebody a name or something.  They laugh at me instead of wanting to fight me.  I've been that way all my life."

The humorous quick quips, stories and asides are as much a part of this Fresno, Calif. product as his deep passion for drag racing.  He is one of a precious few professional drivers in this sport possessing an abundance of both qualities.  And his many fans are always waiting for Scelzi's gems.  He is, most often, a laugh waiting to happen. 

But his racing resume reveals the serious side.

Scelzi is the one who rewrote Top Fuel records in his first two years at the controls of Alan Johnson's Winston Top Fuel dragster (1997-98); the one who won three world championships (1997-98, 2000) and 25 races in 38 title rounds in five years before seeking refuge in Funny Car; the one who bucked the trend, switching from Top Fuel to Funny Car (2002) while still a viable contender.

Scelzi was the "rookie" driver who had amassed impressive credentials in alcohol dragster and Funny Car ranks for many years before getting the opportunity to compete at the sport's highest level.  He remains the only driver in NHRA history to score victories in Top Fuel (25), Nitro Funny Car (4), Alcohol Dragster (3) and Alcohol Funny Car (3).

Scelzi was the unknown driver chosen by Johnson to take the helm of the family's Top Fuel dragster when his brother Blaine died in a racing accident in 1996.  The Scelzi-Johnson combination dominated from the first race in 1997.  Scelzi won his first two races and five overall en route to becoming the first rookie to win the NHRA championship and the first to win his first two professional starts.  He advanced to the semifinals or better at the first 11 races that year and was (quite obviously) the runaway rookie of the year choice.

He won championships again in 1998 and 2000, setting a season record in the last one with nine victories, the most by a Top Fuel driver at the time, and punching out an amazing 54-14 elimination mark.

But the wheels came off (the tires, more precisely) in 2001.  Scelzi did win twice in five finals, but several untoward incidents put the fear of God into this would-be nun impersonator.

"I have been in three pretty major crashes," Scelzi recalled.  "None of them was my fault.  They were all because of mechanical failures.  After the first one in Topeka (1999), I said 'OK, no problem.  How many times is this going to happen?'  Alan and the team were ready to load up and go back to Santa Maria and I forced them to rebuild that car again - builder Brad Hadman was at the race - so we could go back and try to win another world championship.  Besides, I wanted to get back in the car."

He did, but the accidents kept coming.  There was one at the 2000 race in Chicago before the clincher, the one that solidified Scelzi's decision to get out of the long cars and into the full-bodied floppers.

"I can tell you what it's like to lose control and fly through the air, slide and be on fire (in a dragster)," he continued, his face taut, reflecting the harrowing experience.  "I can tell you every wreck, every sound, every second of how long it took and what happened and what was going through my mind . . . from 'how long is this thing going to slide on fire?; am I being burned and I don't know it because of my adrenaline?; is everything just going to go black and I'm just not going to wake up?'  All those things go through your mind.

"Finally, after the third one (2001 at Brainerd, Minn.), when John Smith got hurt, I felt my luck was running out in the Top Fuel car and I wanted to switch to Funny Car.  I believe with all my heart that John, basically, saved my life.  People say I got scared of the dragster.  Call it what you want, but I went out and drove that car as hard as I could every single lap for the rest of the season.  I won at Reading and we finished fifth.  But I'd had enough.  I decided it was time for a change.

"Now if someone wants to call me a coward, come jump in a Nitro Funny Car at night and tell me who's a coward."

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The move into Funny Car in 2002 did not come with the same panache as the Scelzi-Johnson foray into Top Fuel.  Johnson's tuning magic didn't translate to the full-bodied machines as readily as it did to dragsters.  After seven troubling races, Scelzi and Johnson split.

It was NHRA's version of Hollywood's Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston.   Fans wondered how that could be happening.  They were a very successful team.  If it's not broke, why fix it? (Well, the cars kept breaking, and that needed to be fixed.)

Scelzi's desire to drive a Funny Car didn't waver and Jim Jannard of Oakley plucked him from the ranks of racing's unemployed in 2003, pairing him with Scotty Cannon and creating a two-car Funny Car alignment for mega-team owner Don Schumacher.

It was, to Scelzi, something akin to Donald Trump telling someone, "You're hired!"

"I knew where I wanted to be when Alan and I separated," Scelzi said.  "I knew I wanted to be with Schumacher, because he doesn't care what it takes to win and he's going to give you the best equipment and the best people.  There's an old saying that if you surround yourself with good people, it will make things happen.  I believe that.

"I've been known for making things happen in the driver's seat, dating back my alcohol-driving days, and I think that's one of the reason's Alan called me and that's one of the reasons I got the job at Schumacher Racing."

In 46 races over the last two seasons, Scelzi's performances have extracted any last vestiges of fans' doubts of his ability to drive Funny Cars.  He won once in 2003 and three times last season -- defeating '04 champ John Force in all three finals -- while finishing sixth and third, respectively.

"It seems to me that at the middle to end of last year people finally related to me being in a Funny Car," said Scelzi.  "It was a hard transition.  People may have thought, 'well, he can't drive a Funny Car; he doesn't need to be in a Funny Car; we want him in a dragster.' 

"Their false sense was that I'd be a world champion as long as I drove a Top Fuel dragster.  People didn't understand Alan and I had something special.  We were on top of our game, but it doesn't always go that way.

"Now, I think fans accept me as a Funny Car driver," Scelzi added.  "I love the Funny Car ranks.  I do miss winning as much as I did in Top Fuel, but, you know, those five years with Winston were kind of a fantasy land anyway.  Who would've thought you were going to win your first two races as a rookie, win rookie of the year, win the championship and come back and do it again and again.  Those are years you will never forget.  I know I certainly won't.  But, I think, 10 years down the road people will say, 'who is that Gary Scelzi?'"

That's as unlikely as Scelzi winning a cutest nun contest.

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The accomplishments are real: 25 Top Fuel wins, 4 Funny Car wins, 3 NHRA championships, all in a little more than seven years of competition.  Throw in 10 years of racing alcohol-fueled cars and earlier years behind the wheel of sand dragging machines and Scelzi's feats gain perspective.

"I finished No. 2 in the world driving my own alcohol dragster in 1986," Scelzi said.  "Fortunately for me, I was able to be a hired driver after that.  We won division championships in both alcohol classes and were fortunate to win some national events.  But we never had the funding to race the full tour and try compete for the world championship, and that's something I missed.

"That's why when Alan called, I had to do it.  I knew if we had any funding whatsoever we had a shot at it.  And I got to prove to myself, more than anybody else, that I could be a world champion.  That meant a lot to me."

That competitive fire still burns, fueling Scelzi's ambition to join Kenny Bernstein as the only two NHRA drivers to win season titles in Top Fuel and Funny Car.  Bernstein accomplished the milestone with four Funny Car wins (1985-88) and two in Top Fuel (1996, 2001). 

There are formidable foes out there, like 13-time champion John Force and Scelzi's two teammates, Whit Bazemore and Ron Capps, plus any other driver who pulls up next to Scelzi's Mopar/Oakley Dodge on race day.  Now Scelzi sees them all as peers. 

"I'm getting more comfortable with every lap I make," Scelzi says.  "I learn something on every run, and I don't think that ever stops.  A Nitro Funny Car is, beyond a doubt, one of the wildest and most fun cars I've ever driven.  They are unpredictable, nasty, smelly, fire-breathing monsters.  You never know what's going to happen.  They never do the same things twice. Nobody wants to look stupid.

"Those cars are so wicked.  On the majority of runs you can make it down the track, even if the car doesn't cooperate.  That's what I wanted to do. You look at Force, Capps, Bazemore, guys who can get it done in the driver's seat and hope to compare yourself to those guys.  I've done it so far."

There's also a little bit of swagger that goes with the territory.

"I go to each race and say I'm going to win it . . . but not in an arrogant way," Scelzi explains.  "But in my mind, I'm going in there to knock those guys' blocks off.  That's why I'm there.  Now if you don't, you don't call anybody names or go pout in the trailer.  You just dust yourself off and go to the next race and say, 'I'm going to win at (fill in the site).'  

"I think that attitude has been responsible for a lot of my success, whether it be in Scelzi Enterprises with my brothers, racing, or anything I've done. That's way I was raised, and that's the way I plan on raising my two young sons (Dominic, 7, and Giovanni, 3)."

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As he mentioned his sons, this man who dressed in nun's clothing was transformed into father Gary Scelzi.  And that's where he wants to stay.

How long will this fan favorite continue to be strapped into those "wicked" Funny Cars?  Will his goal of winning a NHRA POWERade Funny Car championship be realized?

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