Former Funny Car contender Jerry Toliver, irked once by some baseless rumor, used sarcasm to denounce it: “Pretty soon the story is that the Mississippi River is cresting and I’m dating Madonna.”

As comical as Scott Palmer can be (including promising to sing “Boomer Sooner,” the fight song of his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, when he qualifies for the first time), the Top Fuel owner-driver took a different path. He decided to ignore a rumor that has been circulating since the April 2014 race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and move on with his career.

But during preseason testing at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park at Chandler, Ariz., this week, Palmer addressed the fib that has floated around for too long, the one that the NHRA told him not to come back because of excessive oildowns.

“That’s absolutely not true. Those rumors – that’s why I never talked about it,” he said, biting his tongue a bit.

He said the NHRA has treated him not only fairly but cordially, and he said he has no complaints about the sanctioning body at all.

During that Las Vegas race at the center of this controversy, Palmer had one last chance to qualify. On that run, his Marck Recycling Dragster made a sensational, as in both strong and unfortunate, run. It was quick enough to land him in the field for Sunday’s eliminations. But in that final Saturday attempt, his car appeared to blow the engine and he was charged with an oildown. Because it appeared to be his third of the event, his pass was disqualified and he wound up with a DNQ.

“We actually had a body panel fly off,” Palmer said, conceding, “It didn’t look good. It looked like we’d blown up down there. But actually we didn’t. Come to find out, we didn’t oil the track down.”

But the NHRA had made its ruling.

“They actually disqualified that run. They didn’t disqualify us from the race. They disqualified the run,” Palmer clarified. “So that made us not qualify – we qualified on that run. We would have qualified.”

That’s when the rumor mill started grinding.

“It kind of got blown out of proportion,” he said.

The ruling came after Palmer experienced a fluid leak during his burnout, and he clicked the engine off and was pushed from the starting line. “We broke a No. 3 fitting to our computer sensor, and when I backed up, I saw the drip and I shut the car off. Well, that really wasn’t an oildown [in the truest or traditional sense].”

Said Palmer, “We left that race. We were planning to go to Houston after that, but then we didn’t. And then we got tied up with this deal with Lucas to do a boat [in the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Series]. (I don’t drive the boat. I’m not a boat guy. I’ve never been in a canoe, so I have no business in a Top Fuel boat. Eventually I probably will drive it. Tommy Rice has been driving it.) So we started working on that.

“It was just kind of a coincidence that happened,” he said.

“Believe me, Graham [Light, NHRA’s senior vice-president of racing operations] has been good to us about this, really good,” Palmer insisted.

When Palmer didn’t enter other races, Light called to ask how he was. Palmer clarified, “We’re not mad. We have nothing bad to say about the NHRA.”

Palmer said, “We had people wanting us to do stories, [saying], ‘Hey, they shafted you.’ Not really. Yeah, we weren’t real happy about it. It hurt us because that was $10,000 qualifying money. But it all just fell into the same timeframe. It was actually nothing. It just looked like we went away.”

Much bigger-budgeted teams, it is true, have triggered lengthy clean-ups because of oildowns. “But when a little team does it  . . .   That’s just the way it is,” Palmer said.

“If you want to run in this sport and you want to do it as an independent, you’d better have thick skin – and thick wallet. But we choose to do it this way. We want to own this, and all of us do this together,” he said, nodding to his faithful crew. “It’s not ‘my car.’ It’s ‘our car.’ Same bunch. All of us are friends. We just go when we can all go. If we’re too broke, we stay home. We don’t come out and whine about money. Nobody feels sorry for you if you have a Top Fuel operation. If you tell them you’re broke, nobody believes that. So we just come and do what we want.”

And he always acknowledges those who help him make it to the races and expresses his gratitude.

“Everybody was offering help,” he said of his setback at as Vegas nearly two years ago. “Mike Green [crew chief for Don Schumacher Racing’s Army Dragster] was the first guy to call us. He said, ‘Listen, whatever happened there, you get back out there. We don’t think [poorly] of you guys.’ That means a lot when you’re in our position, because we go out of our way not to be ‘that guy’ [who messes up the racing surface].”

Palmer said, “We haven’t had a lot of problems over the years. We actually haven’t. We go out and run. If you’re a part-time team and you have too many problems, you’re out of business, anyway. You can’t afford to. So no matter what it looks like, if you’re having too many problems, you’re not coming back. Honestly, NHRA has been good to us.”

With its off-season girding for the debut in two weeks of the brand-new FOX-TV package, the NHRA has made it clear everybody needs to work together to ensure a swiftly moving broadcast. And that includes reducing, if not eliminating, oildowns. But Palmer said he has not received any pressure from any NHRA officials to limit oildowns. He said he has not been singled out.

“They know none of us is out here trying to do it. Sometimes it gets hard, because there’s lots of new rules,” Palmer said. At any rate, he said, “We went and ran the boat at the end of last year and did all we could to upgrade the car. And we did – we got new belly pans, new everything.”

But he has his same old loyalty to the NHRA – and his same commitment to telling the truth.

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