Torrence Repeats as Seattle Winner

With the Countdown looming just ahead, Steve Torrence found his “A” game Sunday at Pacific Raceways, wrestling his CAPCO Contractors Top Fuel Toyota to a much-needed victory in the 35th NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways and moving up to third in the Mission Foods driver standings.

Struggling all season long at the starting line, Torrence flashed the form that carried him to four world championships in a final round showdown with Shawn Langdon that ended a 20-race winless streak, his longest in nine years.

Racing in the final round for the fourth time since his last victory, the 41-year-old Texan got an early lead with a .065 reaction time, then nursed his hot rod to the finish after it dropped cylinders down track.

He has had many quicker winning times than the 3.963 he posted Sunday, but few of his 55 tour victories have been sweeter than this one which came on a weekend when his wife Natalie and their two young daughters were back home in Kilgore, Texas.

“These CAPCO boys did a good job,” Torrence beamed after climbing out of his hybrid.  “We've been working on this setup we have and it's definitely showing a lot of promise.  We've had a difficult time trying to manage the power that we're making right now, especially when conditions are subpar.

“So, I think this weekend was (a great example) of what we can do and what we need to do because you had conditions today that ran the gamut,” he said.  “When we were dominant, when we were winning (championships), we could go down any racetrack in any condition.  I mean, it could be wet and we probably could’ve made it down through there (and) not being able to do that has been really frustrating.”

“We haven’t set the world on fire (the last two seasons) but, at the end of the day, we've been right there,” Torrence said of his team’s performance.  “We could have won the championship last year, but we didn’t have the driver to do it.  Had the car, but not the driver.  We’ve just been trying to get everybody on the same page and we’re getting closer.  Today was a big step forward.”

Torrence and his CAPCO boys will move on to Sonoma, Calif., for this week’s 36th DENSO Sonoma Nationals trailing only Doug Kalitta and Langdon in the driver standings just three races before the points are adjusted for the Countdown to the Championship.

“We've put ourselves in a hole on our own and we're having to dig out,” Torrence said after moving up two positions.  “Every shovel we dig from the side we're putting under us and crawling up out of that hole and I think that we're beginning to see some light.  Hopefully, it starts getting bright quickly because it's been dark for about a year and a half, two years.  We’re getting there and we always stick together as a team.”

Although dad teammate Billy Torrence exited in the first round Sunday, he did so in style, posting the second quickest run of the opening round – and his best of the weekend, at 3.706 seconds in a loss to Kalitta, whom he pushed to a track record 3.670.  Nevertheless, the founder and CEO of CAPCO Contractors slipped from seventh to eighth in points in his first full season on the pro tour.