ROSSBURG, Ohio — Giovanni Scelzi may have had the fastest car at Eldora Speedway on Thursday night but he came up empty during the inaugural running of the Joker’s Jackpot with High Limit Racing.
Scelzi, who won his qualifying feature on Wednesday night, led the first 33 laps of the 40-lap event, but his night ended upside down after he got over the cushion and hit the outside wall. The incident came following a red flag.
Scelzi, who had been running against the wall the entire race, explained what happened.
“I hit the fence right before the red off of turn four. Nothing was broken,” he said. “It’s tough you run the wall for — last night was 25 laps and tonight was 40 laps — so you are bound to smash into something at some point. The car was great.
“It sucks to have these guys work harder than they need to. They already worked so hard to get this car right. It sucks. You go in spurts here. There are fast years and years where you are not fast, and we were really fast. It sucks not to take advantage of it but we have two more nights.”
Scelzi knows he needs to rebound quickly with $25,000 on the line Friday at the half-mile track and $175,000 to the winner of Saturday’s 41st Kings Royal.
“It got super thin and other guys made it work, but I got into it,” he said. “You can go home and sulk and be upset, but at the same time we have to race tomorrow.
“You run as hard as you can. Even 40 laps, I would rather lose it burning my shit up than getting passed,” he continued. “It sucks. You want to win and finish the deal. Being eight or 10 laps away, it sucks to get that close, but we were in position to win.”