Scelzi said he spoke with Bazemore at the recent race at Norwalk, Ohio, and that Bazemore, who drove in both the Funny Car and Top Fuel classes, told him he would like to be involved in safety issues. However, Scelzi had his own nominee.
| "I've read that some of the fans are upset and saying, 'I won’t go to the races.' Those are the same fans who weren't going to go when they did the Countdown thing. And the bottom line is: Well, if you don’t care about my life, then why should I care about signing your autograph?” |
"I believe the person they should hire is Chad Head. He has been involved in the IRL now for several years," Scelzi said. "And Chad's up on all the latest stuff. He's also familiar with a lot of the guys in NASCAR, and he can use all that knowledge. He would be a great asset. He's young. The guy works from sunup to sundown. I'm hearing rumors of other people, but I think we're wasting our time."
Sadly, Scelzi said, "When Chad Head worked for NHRA, Chad had really no juice. Chad Head would do things [to help the racers remain safe] and beg for forgiveness after he would do them. I know he would rent lights if he felt that the track wasn't lit right. I know that for a fact. I was with him in Memphis when the lights were so bad that you couldn’t see the first 300 feet. And I watched him move lights off the return road and shine them on the racetrack so at least the 300-foot area was a little bit better."
But NHRA's decision to limit the racing course to 1,000 feet instead of the traditional 1,320 feet, Scelzi said, is a huge step in the right direction.
"I'm not going to be here to beat NHRA up. I'm just thrilled that they've taken action. I've read that some of the fans are upset and saying, 'I won’t go to the races.' Those are the same fans who weren't going to go when they did the Countdown thing." Scelzi said. "And the bottom line is: Well, if you don’t care about my life, then why should I care about signing your autograph?”
"We're doing this because people's lives are valuable and people's families are valuable. If it means 1,000-foot race tracks until we get this in order, and if we don’t get it in order and they stay at 1,000 foot, then you know what? It's still a sport that I love," he said. Scelzi said he agreed with Tommy Johnson Jr., who said the concept is great, if it saves even one life. He said Johnson's wife, driver Melanie Troxel, is against it. "But it’s for her safety, too," he said.
As for the NHRA, Sclezi said, "They've taken action. This is the first time I've seen them take action immediately. I'm hoping this trend continues. I wouldn't have said that if I didn’t believe it. I had a conversation with Graham Light on Tuesday before the Norwalk race, and he told me where he was headed and what he was doing, and I was satisfied with the answer. Now, if things go on and two months down the road, there's nothing else done, and things just stay status quo, then I'm going to bitch about it.
"I'm at a point now in my life that I don’t care. If they want to ban me or they want to suspend me, you know what? I don’t care," Scelzi said. "I think I've got a big enough voice now that people will hear me. What we do is dangerous. I understand. But if we can make this thing 10 or 15 percent safer, then we need to do it and we need to do it now. And we don’t need to stop there. We need to try to prevent things from happening again. We're going to go that direction now.
"I think they understand that we can't have more fatalities and we can't have more accidents. Our sport has had a clean record for so long and it’s becoming a common occurrence now. Whether the reason is that they don’t want to take the heat -- I don’t want to believe that that's the reason. I want to believe that they're genuinely concerned, maybe even though things in the past have shown that they weren’t," he said. "I don’t care what the reasoning is, as long as they keep taking steps like they've taken. I want to see them move these scoreboards. I want to see them move these light poles. And I want to see if that starts happening immediately, because that is not a major cost."
Progress, he said, is a matter of NHRA implementing safety rules and regulations. "Are they behind? Yeah, I think so, but if they're going to go in the right direction now, I've got to support them. I can't kick them if they're going to make an honest effort," he said.
Scelzi said Chris Blair, Las Vegas Motor Speedway's vice-president of racing operations, told him "that all the racetrack operators are saying, 'You tell us what you want and we'll do it.' So the support is snowballing.”
Years ago, when the Unlimited Hydroplane circuit was facing some grave safety issues, marquee driver Chip Hanauer said the series' feeble measures were "like rearranging deck chairs on The Titanic."
Scelzi indicated he isn't about to let the NHRA management slip into useless busy-work with no effective results.
"It's up to us racers and PRO to stick to our guns. We are the show. Do the inmates control the prison? Yeah, we do -- if we stick together. We can keep NHRA honest."
That's a Herculean task, but Scelzi and others seem optimistic and up to it.