While Jimmy Prock was tuning John Force to his 136th Funny Car victory Sunday at St. Louis, his and wife Jill's 18-year-old son Austin was racing in California with four-time NHRA champion Gary Scelzi and his family.
 
The younger Prock, a midget racer and the 2012 STARS (Short Track Auto Racing Series) Rookie of the Year, reconnected with longtime buddies Dominic and Giovanni Scelzi, now 16 and 11 years old.
 
And they crammed their visit with -- what else? Racing.
 
The youngsters went Thursday night to a town near the Scelzis' home at Fresno for some go-kart racing. They were back in the shop the next morning to finish prepping the micro sprint cars to race in that night at Plaza Park Raceway at Visalia. The following night they raced at Lemoore.
 
Dominic Scelzi is working hard to keep up with his much-older, more seasoned competitors in the elite World of Outlaws series. This year he won his first 410 sprint race -- a King of the West series main at Stockton-99 Speedway -- and another 360 event and has earned a Hard Charger Award.
 
"He wants to be with the Outlaws fulltime," Gary Scelzi said.
 
"My overall goal is to win one World of Outlaws main event," Dominic Scelzi said. "If I can win one World of Outlaws main event, I'd feel like my all-time dream has been reached."
 
Meanwhile, Giovanni Scelzi has become a force in the micros, dicing fearlessly with racers in their late teens and early 20s. This pre-teen, who has acquired the nickname "Hot Sauce," also is a gifted mechanic, working on his and his brother's cars.
 
The Scelzis saw the Procks in late August and early September at the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, near the Procks' home at Avon. So they were excited to host Austin Prock last weekend.
 
"We're excited about having Austin here. He grew up with Dominic since they were about four or five years old. Now Austin's 18 and Dominic's 16 and Giovanni's 11. And these guys are like brothers," Gary Scelzi said. "It's really something to see as a father, watching these kids. And now they're becoming men. And they're still as close as they are when they were little."
 
When Scelzi came back to Indianapolis at ESPN's request this summer, "My kids left and went with the Procks to race midgets in Illinois, and I never saw them until Monday night before we left Tuesday morning.
 
"It's kind of amazing. It makes me feel old," Scelzi said with a laugh.
 
HOB-NOBBING - Reigning Top Fuel champion and most recent race winner Antron Brown was honored Monday night in New York at the 28th annual Great Sports Legends Dinner to benefit the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis. The Matco Tools Dragster driver joined such athletes as James Worthy, Terry Bradshaw, Dave Winfield, Shawn Johnson, and Nick Faldo at the Waldorf- Astoria bash with emcee Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News.
 
THRASHING - Khalid alBalooshi, the Top Fuel runner-up at St. Louis, said, "We broke the engine in the semifinals, and the Al-Anabi team changed everything in the car for the final round. My crew chief  [Jason McCulloch] changed everything in the tune-up. He changed a lot of things, and it was a very different car from the one that won in the semifinals."
 
OVERHEARD - "The problem is we keep opening the door wide open for ourselves and then we fail to take full advantage of it. A runner-up is not bad, but we have to win a race if we are going to win the championship. We are probably going to have to win two of the last three races. I guess the upside is we have a car that can do it." - Jack Beckman
 
"Everyone is tired right now, and I can't think of anyone who will be disappointed when this four-in-a-row stretch is over." - Tim Wilkerson