Four-time NHRA champion Gary Scelzi still remembers the day Alan Johnson asked him if he was interested in racing Top Fuel. Without thinking, Scelzi responded, "Only when I'm asleep or awake."

For Scelzi, the spirit was always willing, but the flesh was weak.

It wasn't that Scelzi wasn't capable physically, because he was. The problem was the moment was so overwhelming that it affected his short-term memory.

Days after inking a sponsorship package with Winston, Johnson gave Scelzi the inside track on the driving gig.

Scelzi was invited to help assemble the first Winston dragster with Johnson, at the team's Santa Maria, Ca.- based shop.

"Alan told me, 'I want you to come to Santa Maria when we get all the parts because I want you to be there and help assemble this car," Scelzi recalled in a recent Legends: The Series episode. "I want you to understand what these cars are all about. They’re similar to an alcohol car, but they’re different in a lot of ways. If you help build it, you’ll understand it."

By his account, the first time the team started the car Scelzi admits he failed Start-up 101.

"Alan went over everything, ‘Okay, this is how we’re going to do it: we’re going to spin it over, we’re going to start on methanol, I’m going to let it get heat in it, then I’m going to come over to you, and I’m going to tell you to open the pumps up. You open the pumps up, then when it gets running on nitro, you close one pump off.," Scelzi recalled.

"He goes through this whole thing, and then he says, ‘You got it?’ ‘Yep, I got it.’ I got in that car and started it up, and when that thing went on nitro, I forgot everything he said."

The sheer force of the nitro-burning engine was nothing like Scelzi had ever experienced, and it occurred to him the car was still on jack stands.

"I about *hit myself basically," Scelzi admitted. "It was on 97 percent, that thing’s banging and popping, and Alan’s telling me to let off the clutch. So finally he grabs my leg and pulls my leg to get off the clutch to let the wheels turn. Then I had both pumps open, and he turned the pump off. And then he goes, ‘One pump,’ then he says, ‘Two pumps."

"So two pumps open, then you step off and hold the brake to see where the idle’s set at. I blew it. I completely blew, everything he said, I forgot. I went brain dead. So they shut the car off, and they’re laughing their asses off. They think this is the funniest thing in the world. I guarantee you Jim Head (who was there) to this day thought this guy is never going to be able to drive this car."

Scelzi left the shop headed back to Fresno, Ca., admittedly defeated by the experience.

"I called my wife," Scelzi recalled. "She goes, ‘Well, did you get it started?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She goes, ‘Man, you just don’t sound like the enthusiastic guy like when you got the call.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I’ve got to get out of this deal.’" She said, ‘What?’

"I said, ‘I can’t drive this thing.’ I said, ‘Alan tried to explain everything you’ve got to do on this car,’ I said, ‘I went brain dead. I forgot everything he said. I looked like an idiot’, I said, ‘They’re all on the ground laughing. Alan’s probably figuring out who he’s going to call to drive the GD thing.’ I was that intimidated."

Johnson, nor the team, never gave up on their rookie fuel driver. In fact, it was crewman Jeff Garvin who went the extra mile for Scelzi, going as far as to write out a detailed "cheat sheet" for him to study as well as sending video examples performed by none other than Blaine Johnson himself.

"The videos really intimidated me because that guy could pedal a race car like nobody’s business," Scelzi said. "He was good on the starting line; he did the clutch and the bottom end. Here they’ve got dumbass Scelzi gonna drive this thing from the alcohol ranks."

Johnson decided to take the team to Bakersfield to get Scelzi some laps behind the wheel of the car.

"We went there and started the car, and I did the warm-up procedures perfectly," Scelzi said with a smile. "I mean, my wife had asked me half way in the middle, ‘What do you do here? What do you do after this?’ I’ll never forget, we pull that thing up to the starting line and do the burnout, I stop, and I can’t get it in reverse."

"I try to pull up on the throttle with the tow strap, couldn’t get it. I opened both fuel pumps to get the motor to idle lower, I could not get it into reverse, so I shut it off. So Alan comes running down there and goes, ‘What’s the matter?"

Scelzi said he remembered Johnson swearing, and immediately prepared to take the blame. For once, Scelzi admits, the issue was with a broken reverser and was not on him.

As it turned out, it was Blaine who usually set the clutch, and in this instance, there was not enough pack clearance. They pushed Scelzi back, then refired the car and made a run which resulted in tire-smoke which Scelzi captured quickly to the praise of Johnson.

The next run showed Scelzi he was not only well ahead of where he'd been before but he had better be prepared to go even further.

"I was on the throttle like 1.8 seconds, and I ran a 5.65 at 155 miles an hour," Scelzi said. "The quickest I’d ever been in an alcohol dragster was a 5.65 at 250, all the way to the finish line. And I knew then, I thought, ‘Man, this is going to be something."

Scelzi's next experience came in Phoenix, just weeks before the 1997 NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, Ca. Once again, it provided Scelzi the opportunity to goof up the process.

"I ran to half track, I think I ran 5.40 at like 190, and then the next pass Alan said to drive it to the finish line," Scelzi recalled. "And I’ll never forget at 800 foot, the clutch locked, and the motor pulled down and went and pulled down, and I shut the thing off and pulled the parachutes, and it went 4.74 at like 280. So we get back, and Alan said, ‘Why did you shut it off?’ I said, ‘This thing was going to blow up."

"He said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘You heard it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it pulled on the motor really hard and man I clicked it off before it blew up.’ He said, ‘Really? Okay.’ So we get back, I’m packing the parachutes man, thinking what a hero I am."

"Well, then Alan calls me into the trailer, ‘Hey, Gary, come on in here for a minute.’ So he’s looking at the graph on the computer, he says, ‘Let me ask you a question. When you heard the motor pull down like it did, did it stop pulling?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, it was it was going to run about a 4.63 at 315.’ He said, ‘I don’t care what you hear, or what you think you hear, as long as that thing’s sitting you back in the seat, you stay on the gas until you get to the finish line."

Scelzi didn't lift on the next run.

"Drove to the finish line, 4.63, 315," Scelzi said. "And I believe the record at that time was 4.62."

Scelzi credits both the patience of Johnson and a measure of divine intervention on behalf of Blaine for helping him to "get it."

"We rolled into Pomona, and it was like an out-of-body experience driving that fuel car," Scelzi admitted. "My hands were doing what they were supposed to be doing, I was steering, I was pulling the parachutes, everything was right, and everything I was saying I thought was going on was right, but I wasn’t really sure because it was happening so fast. It’s pretty amazing."

The rest of the story, as Scelzi said, was one of drag racing's greatest success stories for a rookie driver.

Three championships tell quite a story. The story, which Scelzi reiterates, prove it's not how you start but how you finish which counts.