A swell of fan support carried Jeff Diehl, the Funny Car privateer and devoted surfer, to a runner-up finish in Competition Plus’ inaugural Throwback Showdown presented by Boninfante Friction, a virtual-reality drag race.

Afterward, with Wednesday’s $1.5 billion Powerball lottery jackpot up for grabs, the California dreamer found himself humming the Beach Boys tune “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” But the question put to him concerned a measly $4 million and what he would do with such a windfall.

Diehl is a racer, so a predictable answer would be, “I’d put together the sport’s best crew, order the newest, most aerodynamically superior Funny Car, and beat all the high-powered teams for a championship.”

But Diehl isn’t predictable.

“I’d probably go buy an island in Fiji,” he said.

He qualified his choice, saying, “It depends on how I got the $4 million. If I won it in the lotto, I would buy an island and go surfing for the rest of my life. If I put together a program to go do it, yeah. I would definitely go out there and try to do it right and beat those guys.”

It isn’t that Diehl doesn’t understand the correct approach now – he just isn’t blessed with megabucks to have new parts and the latest technology. 

But, like millions of other hopeful Americans, he has taken his chances on the Powerball drawing.

“I’ve been playing with it,” Diehl said, quickly adding with a laugh, “You won’t see me if I win it, though. Why would I go work on a race car if I won all that money? I would go surfing, then go chase my wife around on the island somewhere.”

Someday having enough money to compete on a level playing field with the better-funded Funny Car teams, he said, is “a possibility.” Considering two motivations – “I don’t want to fail” and “I don’t take no for an answer” – Diehl allowed himself a short daydream: “Maybe if I had it different, I’d have a whole different attitude about drag racing, you know what I mean?”

His wasn’t the voice of a bitter man. It was a battle-weary voice of the second-generation drag racer who at age 51 knows driving a Funny Car is safer than the fuel altered in which he used to compete but almost as impossible to fund as it would be to relive his days as a youngster running around at Lions Dragstrip, Orange County, and Irwindale, watching his dad drive a Cobra, then front-engine dragsters in the late ’60s and ’70s. It was the sound of a man tired at the end of each day from building his engine, painting and hanging his own race-car body, and making the most of his previously owned parts to save every dollar he can save.

In the Competition Plus contest, Diehl was associated with the legendary “Jungle Jim” Liberman. And he lit up at the notion of competing back in the days alongside “Jungle Jim” and contest-winner (and real-life champion) Del Worsham’s Blue Max powerhouse, with Harry Schmidt, Raymond Beadle, and Richard Tharp on the throttle.

“Awww, that would have been the coolest thing in the world. To race in that time, when you could match-race . . . ohmygod . . . just missed it,” Diehl lamented.

He said he still enjoys the stories that the late builder-tuner Pat Foster used to spin and shares them with Foster’s son, Cole, of Salinas Boys Customs. Diehl said Cole Foster asked him about his NHRA Funny Car campaigns, “Man, I don’t know how you do it.” Replied Diehl, “I don’t, either. I just keep my head down.”

In fact, he was working on the Funny Car engine with his crew member the evening the Competition Plus contest ended, oblivious to the voting deadline. Not one to frequent the Internet, he was unaware that the lead in his virtual-battle with Worsham had see-sawed seven or eight times and that never had they been separated by more than 140 votes at any given time. Diehl’s wife, Leeza, to whom he entrusts the social media and Internet tasks, was trying to reach out to friends and associates in search of eleventh-hour ballots.

Diehl called results of the bracketed, fan-driven contest “an eye-opener” and said it is “an awesome little thing. I’m pretty blown away by the whole deal.” It is a huge boost to the journeyman racer’s career, one he said he thinks will help him in his marketing efforts to land more sponsors.

Because he said he “didn’t really put any effort to reach out to anybody I know to vote for me” – because he didn’t campaign at all for himself – Diehl was especially buoyed by the fan support.

“It makes it feel better . . . I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s a pretty good feeling,” he said. “He [Worsham] has such a network behind him that I didn’t think we stood a chance.” Diehl said “not having any dirty pool on any teams . . . definitely makes me feel good that the fan appreciation is there.”

Diehl, a faithful surfer when he and Leeza are home at Monterey, Calif., said the water sport “is the most peaceful thing. It’s something that’s soulful. It’s really the only place I can go in life where I don’t think about any problems I have. I’ll go surfing, and I don’t think about race cars, bills, or anything. You surround yourself in this out-of-the-ordinary place.”

He’s in an out-of-the-ordinary place when it comes to drag racing, too. With surfing, he said, “You make yourself strong, because the ocean’s wicked.” Diehl also knows that’s true of drag racing, too. Right now he’s preparing for the Feb. 11-14 Circle K Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.

And he said of the one-man-band routine, “At times it gets a little bit overwhelming. Like right now. My world’s a mess. I’m trying to get ready for Pomona. My paint and body shop is closed down, basically, because there’s no room. I’ve got a race car in a million parts, and bodies, and I’m working on 50 different things. Nobody’s really helping me. I’ve got one crew guys who comes on the weekends for a few hours; he’s got a job. So I’ve got to do it all.”

More than once he has considered leaving drag racing. But like gambling on that next big wave to provide the ultimate thrill, Diehl finds drag racing alluring in that same elusive, impossible-to-control way.

“Surfing is a very, very graceful thing that you’re doing. And just . . . I don’t know . . . it just feels good. It’s kind of dangerous. I don’t ride 50-foot waves, but I’ll go out on some pretty big waves,” Diehl said. “And it’s dangerous, so that gets you goin’.”

It’s just like in a Funny Car.

But he has been prepared to leave it behind.

“I told my wife, ‘Hey, I’m done. I’ve had enough. I’m going to put all that stuff [his racing equipment] on the Internet [to sell]. And two weeks go by and I’m like, ‘Really? Nobody even called?’ And she said, ‘I didn’t even put it on there. What are you talking about?”

Diehl said he wonders “every year” why he keeps coming back for more. He said also couldn’t say who loves drag racing more, himself or Leeza.

“I love the whole process. She loves it, too,” Diehl said. “I’m building her a ’75 Barbie Sting Ray Corvette right now, at the same time [as freshening the car for the Winternationals]. But I love driving [the Funny Car]. I’m excited to tune the thing.”

So why does Jeff Diehl keep coming back to the dragstrip?

“I feel I have what it takes to run with the boys when properly funded. Simple as that.”

That could be a moot point if $4 million suddenly drops into his lap or he wins Wednesday’s Powerball lottery.