{"id":55954,"date":"2018-10-09T05:58:19","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T12:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=55954"},"modified":"2018-10-09T05:58:19","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T12:58:19","slug":"torrence-and-hight-aim-for-nhra-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/torrence-and-hight-aim-for-nhra-titles\/","title":{"rendered":"Torrence and Hight Aim for NHRA Titles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Torrence
Images courtesy NHRA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Woe to anyone who underestimates Steve Torrence and Robert Hight. These two guys are turning NHRA\u2019s Countdown to the Championship six-race playoffs into their personal playgrounds. Texan Torrence has now earned half of the Wally Top Fuel trophies available during this year\u2019s Countdown; Hight\u2019s won two-in-a-row Funny Car contests and repeated his 2017 dominance at Texas this past weekend.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, Torrence\u2019s victory in Dallas was his first hometown Top Fuel victory. His win over 2018 Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals winner Terry McMillen was a close-fought battle on the Texas Motorplex\u2019 1,000-foot dragstrip after McMillen defeated Torrence\u2019s closest competitor, Clay Millican, in the semifinals. The Texan has now won all three first-half Countdown to the Championship contests, with only three remaining: this weekend in Charlotte, pre-Halloween weekend at Las Vegas and the finale two weeks later in Pomona, NHRA\u2019s ancestral home.<\/p>\n

Even so, Torrence remained verbally nonchalant about the achievements he\u2019s had over the past month. He\u2019s still searching for an elusive Top Fuel title – he\u2019s earned a Top Alcohol championship and that title came with a win at his Dallas home track. \u201cWe\u2019ve been trying to get it done here since 2010,\u201d Torrence explained. \u201cThis is a check off my bucket list, to be able to come to Dallas and win.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Torrence<\/p>\n

If this all sounds like deja vu for Torrence and his CAPCO Contractors\u2019 team, it should. After three Countdown races in 2017, Steve Torrence stood atop the points pyramid and had eight wins on the season. Here we are with three in the books and yes, Steve Torrence leads the points again this year with eight victories. But Torrence faded in the final three 2017 contests. He entered the season finale only 20 points in front of Brittany Force, who would earn the title as Torrence exited competition before her in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important for Steve Torrence to think about going rounds. Everybody talks about it, but with the breadth of this year\u2019s competitors, it\u2019s tough to do. There looms yet another race ahead of Steve and his team this coming week, at Charlotte\u2019s zMAX Dragway. He has to continue racing to win that elusive title. He has to go rounds.<\/p>\n

Last year at this time, Robert Hight was catching then-points leader Ron Capps, who lost this past weekend in the first round, further decimating his title hopes. That Hight, president of John Force Racing and less than two weeks removed from clavicle (collarbone) surgery, could be sufficiently comfortable in his 10,000 horsepower Chevrolet Camaro to complete eight laps of competition in Dallas shows the driver\u2019s determination and resilience.<\/p>\n

Earning his 45th national event win, fourth of the year and fourth at the Dallas Motorplex track, Hight is in full swing with half the Countdown completed. He went four qualifying and elimination rounds with a brand new racecar after demolishing his standard-bearer in the Gateway finals (which he won) and suffering his injury. Both the Gateway and Dallas races are sponsored by Auto Club, Hight\u2019s season-long partner at JFR.<\/p>\n

\"Torrence<\/p>\n

\u201cNot celebrating the win in St. Louis was such a bummer. I was in the hospital and my team was already back at the trailer thinking about putting everything back together,\u201d Hight related. \u201cI remember laying there and hearing them say collarbone and eight weeks to get well. I was thinking, \u2018Oh man! I have the points lead and these opportunities don\u2019t come around that often.’\u201d<\/p>\n

It was AAA\u2019s Tom McKernan who introduced him to the USC Keck orthopedic group, who said surgery would allow the racer to be back on track in two weeks. After a week of obeying doctor\u2019s orders, Hight got the all-clear last Thursday and was on his way to Dallas and victory, with a titanium plate keeping his clavicle together. His crew chiefs, Jimmy Prock and Chris Cunningham tuned the Camaro SS to help him get better on-track, lap by lap.<\/p>\n

After beating Jim Campbell with the fastest Funny Car lap of the session (3.94) in Round 1, Hight won a close quarterfinals race against Tim Wilkerson, then had an easier time with Bob Tasca III, who found issues at half-track. That set up an epic battle between first- and second-place rivals Hight and J.R. Todd; Hight took the win with his pass of 3.955 seconds to Todd\u2019s 3.984. The usually centered Hight became emotional with the win.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was one of the biggest rounds I have ever raced, right there,\u201d he crowed. \u201cJ.R. Todd is No. 2 in the points and he was 30 behind me going into the final round. Had I lost I would only be ten points ahead. Since we won, we have a 50-point lead, which is a 40-point swing. I can\u2019t wait to get to the track next week; I am really not sore but I know I have a lot of adrenaline right now. This is an amazing feeling!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hight estimated, when the Countdown began and he entered in third place behind sister-in-law Courtney Force and Matt Hagan of Don Schumacher Racing, that he would need three victories and no first-round losses. Both Courtney Force and Matt Hagan have suffered through those kinds of results. But there are still three more races to run and massive points swings in NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series contests are not unusual. Both Steve Torrence and Robert Hight hope they don\u2019t have to deal with those kinds of lows. Right now, they\u2019re both on incredible highs.<\/p>\n

\"Torrence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woe to anyone who underestimates Steve Torrence and Robert Hight. These two guys are turning NHRA\u2019s Countdown to the Championship six-race playoffs into their personal playgrounds.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":55955,"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":[5614,1259,2,2538,41,7,1632,440,1942],"class_list":["post-55954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-countdown-to-the-championship","tag-drag-racing","tag-injuries","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-robert-hight","tag-steve-torrence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/398-RobertHight-Sunday-Dallas-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-eyu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55954","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=55954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55959,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55954\/revisions\/55959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}