SCELZI GOES TO QUARTERFINALS IN HOUSTON, OUSTED BY TEAMMATE CAPPS

BAYTOWN, Texas (April 1, 2007) - Gary Scelzi gave Kenny Bernstein a payback in the Funny Car opening round of the O'Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals today, knocking him out like he did Scelzi at the last event in Gainesville, Fla.

The driver of the Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger R/T crossed the stripe in 4.804 seconds at 317.05 mph, while Bernstein lost traction, coasting to a 7.931/102.22.

Scelzi then faced his teammate Ron Capps in the quarterfinal stanza, always a tough match-up when you race a DSR teammate. Both launched with near identical reaction times (.067 for Capps, .074 for Scelzi), then Scelzi lost traction early and Capps grabbed the victory with a 4.866/312.42. Scelzi trailed with a 9.254/96.96.

For the 2005 Funny Car champion, racing without Eric Medlen and the entire John Force organization this weekend was difficult. "It's great that Ron Capps won today for Don Schumacher Racing, but it seemed awfully empty without the Force cars here. And even when you look on the qualifying ladder the first thing you normally look at, and I think everybody does, is who's got a Force car and how they end up, who's got to run them and when you've got to run them. No matter where they qualify or what, those guys, they're the guys. It almost felt like a match race, even though we were trying to win it.

"I would have loved to have won this race and brought a trophy home to John Medlen. I'm glad that Ron said the trophy he won today will go to the Medlen family, which I think is where it belongs, at least this first one.

"We're all going to go to Vegas, John Force's team is going to be there and we won't be back to normal, ever."