![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Steve-Torrence-action-AP-photo-min.jpg\")
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Steve Torrence has been on the cusp of a Top Fuel championship in NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competition for the past several years. He\u2019s been close enough to smell the title but still hasn\u2019t had the chance to don the big leather jacket and raise the ginormous champion\u2019s cup in celebration. It\u2019s enough to boil a Texan\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n
Now with four victories in an 11-race span during the 2018 season, Torrence remains hungry for the big prize, and realizes it\u2019s going to take more than simply winning races – although that\u2019s not easy to do – in order to bring home the title. In 2017 Torrence won eight races leading up to the season finale at Pomona; he still couldn\u2019t keep Brittany Force from becoming the first woman in 35 years to earn a Top Fuel championship.<\/p>\n
That eight-race victory span in 2017 was touched by weekends when Torrence and his team couldn\u2019t find the right balance for their dragster. That was especially true with the season finale, when an angered Torrence went out in the second round and saw his closest challenger, Brittany Force, win both the race and the championship titles. Those failures invigorated Torrence for his next attempt.<\/p>\n
As he enters the 12th of 24 races on the 24-contest docket, having won at Richmond and taking a semifinal result in Bristol, Torrence and his CAPCO Contractors dragster lead the points standings with 896 points to Clay Millican\u2019s 786. Tony Schumacher, winner of last weekend\u2019s Fitzgerald USA NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, is third with 760 points, while Doug Kalitta holds 717 fourth-place points. No other driver lies within 200 points of Torrence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a whole the season has gone very well for us,\u201d Torrence acknowledged. \u201cWe faltered in Chicago but we turned right around and got a win (Richmond). We\u2019ve recovered very well and I\u2019m proud of that. It\u2019s really neat to go somewhere as the defending race winner, but it\u2019s something you only think about briefly going into the race,\u201d he said of this weekend\u2019s race at Summit Racing Equipment Motorsport Park in Norwalk, Ohio, where Torrence was the 2017 winner.<\/p>\n
![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Steve-Torrence-AP-photo-min.jpg\")
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Having recorded 12 wins in his last 30 races, Torrence \u201cwon this race last year and we will try to do it again. We would like to leave our mark there if possible,\u201d he said of the upcoming Norwalk race. Performing well in the grueling heat of the summer months can bring this team closer to their championship objective. \u201cThis stretch is a test of endurance. We would like to finish strong for sure,\u201d Torrence said of the four-week grouping of races. \u201cIt shows you and your guys have the grit and can stand the test of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the same team we had all last year and the year before that, and they\u2019ve shown the [necessary] resiliency and drive. We\u2019re going to try to keep moving forward, but these guys are tested,\u201d Torrence admits. \u201cWe\u2019re where we want to one. We\u2019ve won four races and gone rounds, so we\u2019re in a good spot. We can always strive for more, but we hold the bar pretty high for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Norwalk race is a tough one for the professional ranks, in particular the 10,000-plus-horsepower Top Fuel dragsters. No Top Fuel racer has more than two wins at this track, so back-to-back victories for Steve Torrence would put him in company with three-time champion Larry Dixon for the most wins in class at the track. It won\u2019t be easy with surging eight-time champ Schumacher on the prowl, and with Millican, whose newly realized competitiveness has, along with Torrence, upset the big-team prominence in this class.<\/p>\n
Torrence believes he\u2019s got the opportunity to claim back-to-back wins at the Ohio dragstrip. \u201cWe\u2019re optimistic going into Norwalk. We\u2019ve had success there in the past and it\u2019s always a fun race. It\u2019s a pretty neat place and there\u2019s a lot of fans there. They do a great job of entertaining the fans there and it\u2019s always a cool place to go. We\u2019re looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The weather forecast for this weekend includes moderate temperatures in the mid-70s with a zero percent of precipitation from Friday through Sunday, together with moderate humidity. The conditions will, no doubt, be a good respite for the steaming heat the drag racers experienced at Bristol, Tennessee last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Steve Torrence has been on the cusp of a Top Fuel championship in NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competition for the past several years.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":52703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,1819,41,7,1632,1942],"class_list":["post-52702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-mello-yello-drag-racing-series","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-steve-torrence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/lead-min-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-dI2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52706,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52702\/revisions\/52706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}