Top Fuel star Steve Torrence knows all about winning races and world championships.
The Kilgore, Texas, driver has earned 54 Wallys, and he notched four world titles from 2018-21.
Yet, it has been a year since Torrence has been in the winner’s circle, and he’s trying to return to glory at the Northwest Nationals this weekend in Seattle.
Torrence took a positive step in reaching that goal by capturing the provisional No. 1 qualifying spot with a stout 3.688-second elapsed time in a track-record speed of 335.32 mph at Pacific Raceways.
This was the first time drivers qualified under the lights at Pacific Raceways.
“This was really cool,” Torrence said. “There were a lot of fans here to go out and race in front of at night. It is late. It is 1 o’clock in the morning where I’m from. It was special. The track owners here and the people here at Pacific Raceways did a great job trying to put on a good show for the fans, and that’s what is about. We have to get people out here looking at us and watching us and enjoying what we do.
“To go out and run 335 (mph), that’s a stout run. (Friday night) is a hero run for all of us and will not really be relevant for (Saturday) or raceday, but you kind of get to pound your chest a little bit and say, ‘We were low E.T., and we were No. 1. I think that will stay safe for the rest of the weekend and we can get ready for race day tune-up now. My dad’s car was running well, and it looked like it had a fuel line break. The visor on his helmet is cracked and the windshield is cracked and that is the product of nitro.”
Billy Torrence, Steve’s father, is No. 11 in the field with a Friday-best run of 3.872 seconds at 315.19 mph.
If Steve keeps his spot, it would be his second No. 1 qualifier of the season – he also was No. 1 in Phoenix – and the 39th of his decorated career.
“This was a great day, great weekend and a good way to start it off,” Steve said. “We like racing here. We had a lot of success here in the past, and maybe we can kind of get the monkey off our back. It has been one year to the race that we had not won, and I have not gone that long in a long time, and we are trying to change our luck.”
Steve won Top Fuel Wallys in Seattle in 2012 and 2023. A year ago, he defeated Doug Kalitta in the final round.
“I've been fortunate enough to win at every one of these racetracks, so you have a little bit of mojo or confidence that you can build off from the past,"he said, "but you still have to look at your car and look at the performance and look at how you've been driving and everything and just use that to motivate you, and the car's coming around.
"The car's doing well. It's been difficult throughout the hotter racetracks in the summertime, but I think that we showed that we had a really good car at the first of the year, and this is trending back to cooler conditions and that's what we're going to have to run in when we race the last six (in the Countdown) for the championship. I think that we've modified our approach to racing for a championship because ultimately, it's the last six. It's not the full season, it's getting ready for the last six and come loaded for bear.”
Torrence arrived in Seattle fifth in the standings on the strength of five semifinal performances, including the last race in Norwalk, Ohio, on June 30. Billy Torrence is seventh in the points powered by a runner-up finish at the season-opening race in Gainesville, Fla., against Shawn Langdon.
Steve also acknowledged he and his father’s dragsters have been the victim of an usual amount of parts breakage this season.
“Yeah, that's been a culprit for a lot of things in my car, in my dad's car,” Steve said. “Some of the things that you break, the technology hasn't changed in years. So, you look back and ... we're finding weak links in some of the stuff we're doing. So, we've been able to modify them, change them, get them back to where they need to be or beef them up. But, yeah, we're breaking some stuff that shouldn't break, and we are breaking it, and I don't think we're the only people having that problem.
“You look at these cars and look and the power they're making, you go 335 (mph), you go 337, 338. It just takes power. Speed is power. We spent a couple of years trying to develop this power. We have got the power, now we're trying figure out how to manage it, basically.”
A year ago, Torrence was in the fight to the finish before losing a world championship to Doug Kalitta and coming in second in the points standings.
“You definitely need to be in the top five for striking distance to go in and try to chase that championship,” he said. “You can win it from any spot, but you give yourself a better advantage being closer because you want to be able to control your own destiny and not have to count on others making mistakes to get around them, because when the Countdown starts, when the conditions cool off, the tracks are stellar like this, more often than not, you're going to have to run low 70s or better every lap, and that's where we need to be.”
