In Driver’s Seat After 20 Years

Sometime around 2:30 p.m. today, Alan Johnson and his crew will roll their red and white top-fuel dragster to the starting line at Pomona Raceway and Gary Scelzi automatically will become the National Hot Rod Assn. driver’s champion.

It pays $200,000, but it isn’t the way the Johnson family planned it.

Scelzi knows it. Alan knows it. All the Johnsons know it. The entire world of drag racing knows it.

Blaine Johnson, younger of the racing brothers from Santa Maria, was the man who was to become No. 1.

The dream seemed over when Blaine, 34, lost his life in an accident while qualifying for the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Aug. 31, 1996.

In reality, however, the dream never ended. Alan wouldn’t let it.

The team’s engineer, manager and crew chief, he was back in the pits the next day, working for driver Jim Head at what he does best, preparing a 5,500-horsepower engine designed to catapult a 2,100-pound car down a quarter-mile in less than five seconds at speeds of more than 300 mph.

When he decided to carry on this year with the family team--Dad Everett works on the crew, Mom Agnes keeps the books and pays the bills--Johnson’s first call was to Scelzi, an old friend from his sand-dragging days, asking him to fill the seat left vacant by Blaine’s death. The aim remained the same.

“It was very important to me to win the top-fuel championship because it meant that the dream Blaine and I started together 20 years ago would come true,” Alan said. “It was something I just had to do. The year we had going in 1996 had to be fulfilled.”

At the time of Blaine’s death, he was leading the NHRA top-fuel standings.

Scelzi doesn’t even have to qualify for this weekend’s Winston Finals to reach the goal, although of course there are important races at stake--the Budweiser Classic on Saturday that pays $100,000 to the winner, and the Finals on Sunday. All he has to do is show up at the starting line today to become champion in his rookie season.

Drivers get 10 points for entering and trying to qualify. Those 10 would give him a lead impossible for the fast-closing Cory McClenathan to overcome in the year’s final event. McClenathan won six of the last 10 races, but when Scelzi won two weeks ago in Houston, the chase was over.

“This will be Blaine’s win too,” Scelzi said. “He’s been with me every inch of the way. There have been times I’ve been in the car and I’ve held conversations with him. People ask me, ‘How does it feel to fill Blaine’s shoes?’ and I tell them those shoes are never going to be filled.

“I’m just the guy the Johnsons picked to drive their car. No one will replace Blaine, there’s only one Blaine Johnson.”

Inside the cramped compartment where Scelzi sits for his explosive runs, there is a picture of Blaine on one side of the gauges. On the other side is a photo of one of Scelzi’s son, Dominic, born May 2.

*

The Johnson’s dream began in 1975, when Blaine, Alan and their father were watching the sand drags at Santa Maria Spillway Park. They decided to build a chassis, bolt on an engine and go racing.

Alan was the driver then, Blaine being only 13. But once the younger brother grew up and began to do the driving, Alan found himself enjoying more and more the complicated work of building and tuning engines.

“At first, I built the chassis too,” he said. “But in the late ‘80s, we decided to buy one from Brad Hadman. It was an alcohol dragster, the first one he’d ever built himself. Brad had worked for years for Al Swindahl [one of drag racing’s legendary craftsmen]. When we heard Brad was going on his own, we got together, exchanged ideas and ordered one.

“We won our first championship with that car and the relationship has lasted for 10 years. We have a 1998 model ordered from him for next season. It’s different from the one we’ll run at Pomona. Nothing radical, just some subtle changes. You know, a tweak or two here and there.”

The Johnsons dominated the NHRA’s top-alcohol division as Blaine became the first driver to win four consecutive championships, 1990-93, winning a record 26 races.

In 1994, they moved tentatively into the high-tech nitro ranks of top fuel. The following season, Johnson became a name to consider in the same light as the veterans of the sport--Joe Amato, Kenny Bernstein, Eddie Hill, Scott and Connie Kalitta and young McClenathan.

“We spent the first year just learning what to expect,” Alan said. “During our second year, we qualified No. 1 seven times, but we couldn’t seem to win a race. Then we finally won, at the Winston Finals, the last race of the season.

“Right then is when we realized we might have a shot at winning the Winston championship. We felt if we did our homework over the winter and came out strong, we had a legitimate shot at it.”

Blaine won the opening race of 1996 at Pomona, defeating Connie Kalitta, who had won that same event in 1967. He followed that with victories at the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., and the Autolite Nationals at Sonoma, and also set a national elapsed-time record of 4.59 seconds at Topeka, Kan.

“We still have the car that won the Winston Finals in ’95 and set the record at Topeka,” Alan said. “We’re going to restore it and put it in the NHRA museum at Pomona.”

And what of the car that crashed at Indianapolis?

“It’s out in back of the shop, pretty much totaled. It’ll probably stay like that.”

*

Scelzi, a vagabond driver from Fresno who raced weekends as a diversion from his business of manufacturing cabs for big rigs, was Johnsons’ first choice, even though he had never driven a nitromethane-fueled car.

“I’d known Gary for a long time. I’d raced against him in sand drags--beat him most of the time too,” Johnson said with a smile. “But I’d watched his career and the thing I liked was that he always seemed to be winning, and not always in the fastest car.

“Moving from alcohol to nitro was the same move we’d made, so we felt he could do it, although it’s not easy. It’s a hell of a difference, really.”

The difference is going from handling a 2,500-horsepower car to one with 5,500 horses.

“The only way I can describe my feelings when Alan called me, was ‘Wow!’ ” Scelzi said. “I had followed the Johnsons ever since the sand days and I’d always admired how they got the job done.

“I had been friends, but we never went to dinner together, or exchanged Christmas cards. At races, they were always too busy working on the car. I was a hired driver, I’d wander around, telling jokes and stuff like that.

“When Blaine was terrorizing the top alcohol class, I was racing funny cars, and the two groups don’t socialize much. I kept close track of them through my friend Mike Gordon, who played a lot of golf with Alan. Gordon was the one who called me when Blaine was killed. I was in absolute shock.

“Now I feel like family. I even call Alan’s parents Ma and Pa. What a hell of a year I’ve had. Like, ‘Wow!’ ”

*

The championship was assured two weeks ago in Houston, where Scelzi defeated Larry Dixon in the final round after surviving one of the most spectacular fires of the NHRA season.

In qualifying, Scelzi had career bests of 4.575 seconds--the fifth-best of all-time--and 318.24 mph.

“I told Alan we ought to go for the [elapsed time] record [4.564 by Amato],” Scelzi said. “I thought the track would hold it, but something broke when the car left [the starting line]. I knew we were in trouble, but I couldn’t see Dixon. I knew I had to get to the end so I ran pretty hard and stayed on the pedal. If it hadn’t been a final round, I would have backed off.

“When I pushed the ‘chute button, the tire blew off and the car came to a flaming halt. I jumped out of the car--I’d only felt the fire for a second or so. All I wanted to know was who won. I kept asking people and no one knew. Finally, Steve Evans [NHRA announcer] came riding up in his golf cart and told me I’d won.

“When I saw the video, that’s when I got scared.”

Johnson, who has been working around the clock this week to repair the chassis, explained what happened:

“A valve-train part broke during the burnout. When Gary hit the throttle at the start, it exploded a cylinder. It happened right on the starting line, but it didn’t catch fire until it got down the track. By that time he was probably running on only five cylinders.

“When the first cylinder exploded, the block hit the chassis and bent the tubing, so we had to replace most of the tubing in the rear of the chassis. It takes time. You want to make sure you do a good job when you’re going to have somebody riding in it at 300 mph.”

Scelzi, the championship safely in his pocket, still wants to finish with a flourish.

“We want to finish the season the way we started it,” he said. “We won the first two races, so we’d like to win the last two races, too.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Facts

* WHAT: Winston Finals, final event of National Hot Rod Assn.’s 22-race season.

* WHERE: Pomona Raceway.

* WHEN: Today

through Sunday.

* TV: Saturday and Sunday, TNN, 4 p.m..