See Tim Wilkerson's smile in the accompanying photo? It's still there three days after scoring his seventh career NHRA

POWERade Funny Car Series win during the recently completed NHRA Summitracing.com Nationals in Las Vegas. 

In fact, much of this year he's been smiling, especially after qualifying. Thus far in 2008, in four of the first five races of the season, Wilkerson has qualifiued no lower than third with two pole positions to his credit. Sunday's triumph places him second in the points standings, just five behind Ashley Force.

See Tim Wilkerson's smile in the accompanying photo? It's still there three days after scoring his seventh career NHRA

POWERade Funny Car Series win during the recently completed NHRA Summitracing.com Nationals in Las Vegas. 

In fact, much of this year he's been smiling, especially after qualifying. Thus far in 2008, in four of the first five races of the season, Wilkerson has qualifiued no lower than third with two pole positions to his credit. Sunday's triumph places him second in the points standings, just five behind Ashley Force.

"We've had a good car all year," Wilkerson said. "We've had some mechanical failures and I made some mistakes tuning the car at Houston when we put a hole out in the second round there against Del (Worsham), but he just had his stuff together and whooped me. But this is kind of cool for the single-car teams, don't you think? We have Tony Pedregon winning one, and me and Del, and I think that's really cool. The NHRA has done a really good job leveling the field, and the Chevy Impala, that body is really helping us out. That thing is the cat's meow when it comes to these bad tracks."

Wilkerson missed his third pole of the year by just .001 of a second in Vegas. Good thing for him he was second, in both times as the leader, he fell in the first round of eliminations. 

"We did the best we could and my crew did a great job," Wilkerson said, speaking about the victory. "The U.S. Smokeless guys helped us change a motor between rounds because I hurt the motor against Ron Capps, and that was a big deal too.

"Ashley and me had a good side-by-side race in the finals, and I knew it would be close," Wilkerson said. "If you remember, in Q3, we had a good side-by-side run, and she went 4.96 and I went 4.95, so I knew they weren't going to go up there and back up. Last year at Indy I raced her in the first round and she embarrassed me to death. I wasn't going to go up there and leave anything on the table. We went up there swinging hard and this time we got lucky."