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BILLY TORRENCE SCORES IN NEW ENGLAND
Team Capco wins for 12th Time in 13 Races on All-Concrete Tracks

June 13, 2021 -- For those hoping to mount a challenge for the 2021 NHRA Camping World Top Fuel championship, Sunday’s good news was that point leader Steve Torrence finally lost a race on one of the all-concrete tracks on which he has been dominant the last four seasons.

For those same hopefuls, the bad news was that, despite the fact that his Capco Contractors dragster bowed out of the TascaParts.com New England Nationals in the semifinals, Torrence actually extended his point lead over second place Antron Brown through the season’s first six races from 140 to 162 points.

To make matters worse for the pursuers, while the three-time reigning World Champ failed to get his third straight win at New England Dragway, his dad Billy made sure the winners’ circle was Capco red-and-black yet again.

Qualifying No. 1 for the second time this season, the elder Torrence used a .013 of a second starting line advantage to beat Mike Salinas to the finish line by .002 of a second in the final round and give Team Capco its 12th win in the last 13 tour events contested on one of the tour’s four all-concrete tracks.

To compound the frustration for those chasing the champ was the fact that his dad made the biggest move in the driver standings, jumping all the way up to third place behind Brown, whom he narrowly defeated in the second round.  That win, his first against the three-time former champion in their last four meetings, sent him straight to the finals, thanks to a semifinal bye resulting from a short 12-car starting lineup.

The founder and CEO of Capco Contractors, a full-service pipeline construction and maintenance company based in Henderson, Texas, won for the seventh time in his brief Top Fuel career and for the second time on concrete.  He will move on to the 14th Summit Racing Equipment Nationals, June 25-27, at Norwalk, Ohio, trailing Brown by 53 points and his son by 215.

“Another great job by the Capco boys,” Torrence said.  “It would have been great to race my ‘ol man in an all-Capco final round but hats off to Mike Salinas and that Scrappers team.  We just didn’t have anything for them in the semis but, thanks to Billy and the boys, we’re taking another one of these little gold men (a reference to the NHRA “Wally” trophy awarded to event winners) back home to Kilgore.”

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