Toliver is no more mellow than he was in his WWF heyday or with the short-but-spirited MAD Magazine/DC Comics/Warner Brothers affiliation. And how could he have been at Pomona? He marked his return to the sport after an absence of nearly two years in wild style.

By the time he outran Densham in the final with a 4.821-second run at 319.29 miles an hour to the Mustang driver's 4.955/327.11, Toliver already had been through a buzz saw.

"It was not an easy day for us," the No. 15 qualifier said, recounting how his Keith Adams-led crew changed motors twice between the second and third rounds and barely made it to the starting line for the semifinal run against Del Worsham. "We blew the motor up in the second round. We took the motor out; we put one in. We got ready to fire it and it wouldn't turn over. So we got it out and we had 20 minutes left."

Referring to a sportsman racer whose mishap and subsequent delay of the action bought him more time to prepare, he added, "I want to buy that guy who ran into the sand trap a case of beer, whoever he was, because we were down to the wire. I was strapped in the car and we pulled up (to the starting line) and we had no time.

"Then it goes out there without warming up, without doing the normal deal -- we didnít set the mags . . . didnít do anything! -- and we run a 4.738 at 328.22 miles an hour!" he said.

That pass did more than mark career bests for Toliver and the quickest and fastest of the weekend in the class. That speed was the fourth- fastest in NHRA Funny Car history.

"Whodathunk it?" he said. "It came together because of good preparation. Yeah, my guys dug themselves a hole. They messed up on the motor going in, but they got themselves out of it."

His day started out roughly. He beat heralded rookie and No. 2 qualifier Eric Medlen in the opening round, but his clutch locked up, forcing him to struggle to keep the

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car off the wall. "I was busy in there, working," he said.

Toliver hadn't raced since March 2002, and he said he was grateful for the chance to experience victory again: "There were times I sat home and I thought, 'Hey, you know what? I may never get back out there, let alone win a national event.' I said if I ever do, I promised myself that I would savor that moment and I would appreciate it more. From the bottom of my heart, this is unbelievable, this feeling."

Toliver, $40,000 richer, said, "Everything just worked. We even won Best Appearing Car Award. I'd never won that! I had WWF stuff, all those crazy-ass cars and I never won it. They couldn't take pictures of it earlier because we blew the damn thing up (in qualifying). But that's the way our weekend went. We worked hard. We dug down deep and as a team we pulled it out."

Schumacher clearly enjoyed Toliver's feat. The dragster champ said, "How about Toliver? And for a new sponsor -- we all need to do that. He's been out a couple of years. He was 15th qualifier, with a new car. Car's all over the place. He's still getting used to driving it. Breaking engines. He's got a mean tune-up. You take two years off . . . It may be a year too long sitting on the side. That's fast. The Funny Cars are a lot faster than they were then, and the bodies are a lot harder to see out of because they're shrinking the top of them. They're difficult cars. I'll bet that scared the life out of him, man."