Toliver Loses First-Round Match-up with Neff at Sonoma

Final eliminations for the FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals at Infineon Raceway were completed today and CANIDAE Funny Car driver Jerry Toliver lost in a first-round match-up with Mike Neff. It was the third meeting this season between the two Funny Car combatants as Toliver defeated the Force Racing driver at Gainesville in March and Neff defeated Toliver last month at Englishtown.

Toliver qualified the CANIDAE/Lucas Oil Chevy 15th with an elapsed time of 4.312 seconds at 290.57 mph. In the first round Neff had a winning elapsed time of 4.127 seconds at 302.35 mph as Toliver lost traction before the 330-foot mark and slowed to a 7.945 e.t. at 78.66 mph.

"We're just really struggling with that first part of the track," Toliver said. "We can't seem to find any consistency with this CANIDAE car. We're making one or two decent qualifying passes, but then we shake the tires in the first 300 feet on the other runs. That makes it tough on Jim (team owner/crew chief Dunn) to tune the car for Sunday when we aren't making full pulls. We knew we had to step it up against Neff and the car just didn't like it."

Next stop on the 24-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Series is race No. 16, the 28th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd Int'l. Raceway in Brainerd, Minn., from Aug. 13-16.