Giovanni Scelzi Excited to Continue Chase for KWS-NARC Championship
Inside Line Promotions – CHICO, Calif. (Oct. 2, 2017) – Giovanni Scelzi is in the thick of a tight points battle as the 2017 season is winding down.
Scelzi and Roth Motorsports will return to action this Friday at Ocean Speedway in Watsonville, Calif., with the King of the West-NARC Fujitsu Series. Scelzi is second in the championship standings – only five points out of the lead – with three races remaining on the schedule.
“I’m looking forward to heading to Ocean Speedway,” he said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself every race. You always want to run well and you show up to win. That’s how I treat every event. There is more pressure on these last races, but I don’t feel any different.”
Scelzi is coming off a solid weekend during the Fall Nationals at Silver Dollar Speedway, where more than 50 drivers competed.
He teamed up with Van Dyke Motorsports for the doubleheader, which began last Friday with Scelzi setting quick time during qualifying for the 10 th time this season. He then advanced from fourth to second place in a heat race before an eighth-place finish in the dash lined the team up on the outside of the fourth row for the A Main.
“The track took rubber at the end of the dash and then again early in the main event,” he said. “We struggled with the balance of the race car. It had a lot of forward drive and would wheelie. At a track where you have to hustle and race so hard we needed more side bite.”
Scelzi battled inside the top 10 throughout the race before closing with a 10th-place result, which was his 24th top 10 of the season. Here is a link to watch the main event: https://youtu.be/etRSamLLfVY.
The event wrapped up on Saturday with Scelzi timing in third quickest in his group. He then won a heat race before finishing second in the dash to start the main event on the outside of the front row.
“I got a bad start and fell back,” he said. “I went to the bottom and got passed on the top and then went to the top and got passed on the bottom. Once the rubber came in there wasn’t much we could do. We were riding in sixth for a while and there was a restart with 10 laps to go. Someone drove into the side of me and that dropped us outside of the top 10.”
Scelzi was in contention for at least another top-10 result before the late-race incident relegated him to an 11th-place finish.
“I want to thank Harley for the opportunity,” he said. “We had a good weekend and almost came out of it with two top 10s.”