Inside Line Promotions – ELDON, Mo. (May 25, 2020) – Dominic Scelzi produced his first feature victory of the season on Sunday evening to cap a busy holiday weekend.
Scelzi led the majority of the ASCS Sooner Region and ASCS Warrior Region event during his debut at Lake Ozark Speedway, recording his first win of the year during what has been an unimaginable start to 2020.
“Rolling into this season back in February my goal was to win 10 races,” he said. “Right now I just cracked 10 races that we’ve raced. There’s no certainty of anything. To be able to get a win during a pandemic and in a time they aren’t allowing a full capacity of fans, it was very different. But it was meaningful to be able to get a win right now.”
Scelzi powered from fifth to second place during his heat race to earn a spot into the feature redraw.
“We’ve been changing some stuff around to help us out in the moisture,” he said. “We’ve struggled getting a balance when the track has grip. Earlier Sunday we changed motors and knew there were quite a few storms coming. We left late and pulled into the track at the drivers meeting. It was waiting on the weather all night wondering what was going to happen. We drew the No. 36, which started me fifth in our heat race. Halfway through the heats it started raining. I only had two heats before mine so the track had some grip for my heat. We went fifth to second, which was great.”
Scelzi pulled the No. 1 during the feature redraw to garner the pole position for the 40-lap A Main.
“I got the jump and led the first half right around the bottom,” he said. “As the bottom got slower we had to move around. The middle and top were dirty. There wasn’t a defined line. Sam (Hafertepe Jr.) got by me on Lap 24. I got my wing back and ran the middle and top in turns one and two and the bottom in turns three and four. We were able to run him back down and take the lead on Lap 30. From there on it was pretty thick traffic to the end. I was able to put a handful of cars between us. It was special to be able to pass someone like Sam, who is one of the top 360 racers out there.”
The victory tied a bow on a weekend that also featured a World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series doubleheader at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Mo. A whopping 61 competitors entered the event.
“On Friday we made good laps in qualifying, but didn’t have mile per hour; we just didn’t have speed,” he said. “With 60-plus cars that put us in a non-qualifier. It was tough to pass and we finished fourth. That put us in the C Main and we drove from 11th to sixth. I didn’t feel like we were off car-wise; we just didn’t have the speed we needed.”
Scelzi improved his results on Saturday, qualifying eighth quickest in his group and placing fourth in a heat race to lock into the A Main.
“I felt like we were decent in qualifying and we were really good in the heat,” he said. “I raced hard for third, but couldn’t get by him. They reworked the track before the main event and we were just really tight. About midway through the race we had dropped back some and I felt like we were in a position where we didn’t want to tear up equipment so we pulled off early.”
Next up for the team is a World of Outlaws doubleheader at Lake Ozark Speedway this Friday and Saturday.