{"id":63546,"date":"2019-07-03T10:56:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T17:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=63546"},"modified":"2019-07-03T10:56:45","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T17:56:45","slug":"can-anyone-stop-steve-torrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/can-anyone-stop-steve-torrence\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Anyone Stop Steve Torrence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Can<\/p>\n

This weekend, the fireworks take place in Epping, New Hampshire and begin July 5th, as NHRA\u2019s Mello Yello Top Fuel and Funny Car competitors encamp at New England Dragway for the 7th annual NHRA New England Nationals.<\/p>\n

While the rest of the United States will be watching above on July 4th for patriotic displays of pyrotechnics, fans of the nitro-powered, 11,000-horsepower open- and closed-wheel behemoths will get their chance to see the stars battle for supremacy on the 1,000-foot dragstrip, competing for qualifying spots on both Friday and Saturday. The exhibition Mountain Motor Pro Stock and Top Fuel Harley categories are also on-hand for the festivities.<\/p>\n

This weekend\u2019s official entry list, as posted, shows a minimal field of 13 dragsters for the Top Fuel category, all of them continuing to chase Steve Torrence as he and his team perform at the highest level. Torrence won this race last year en route to his 11 wins and first NHRA national Top Fuel championship; he\u2019s intent on adding to his current total of six 2019 Top Fuel Wally trophies. In fact, Torrence has won half the races held to date!<\/p>\n

Owning 33 Top Fuel wins in his career and half the wins this year, Torrence is still intent on improving his abilities behind the wheel and his team\u2019s work in the pits. \u201cFor now,\u201d he said, \u201cwe just want to keep moving forward. We want to stay on our \u2018A\u2019 game and try to run with that through the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although fellow independent racer Mike Salinas, absent this weekend, stopped Torrence\u2019s torrid win streak at Bristol, the Texan rebounded at Norwalk, the most recent contest on the docket. While he lost in the final round in that Tennessee contest, Torrence considered it a blip in the road.<\/p>\n

\"Can<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, at some point something\u2019s going to happen even if everyone does their job perfectly. You go back and race,\u201d after any loss. \u201cWe want to win every race we go to. You\u2019re not trying to play strategy and get into the top 10. We want to win all of them,\u201d as he did in last year\u2019s six-race Countdown to the Championship.<\/p>\n

In Epping, Torrence will have to contend with a grouping of former champions and champions-in-waiting as he attempts to add another yellow win hat to his collection. Three-time champ Antron Brown of Don Schumacher Racing, 2017 champ Brittany Force and rookie Austin Prock from John Force Racing, regular title contenders Doug Kalitta and Richie Crampton of Kalitta Motorsports, six-time IHRA titleholder Clay Millican, fellow independents Terry McMillen and Scott Palmer, along with Dom Laguna, Dan Mercier, Cameron Ferre and Audrey Worm are all looking to be giant-killers.<\/p>\n

While Torrence hasn\u2019t picked up all the \u201clittle\u201d qualifying points, he continues to stand tall in the points tally, leading Kalitta 1,164 to 760 points. The balance of the Top Fuel ten-best is much tighter, with third placed Brittany Force holding 744 points, Brown owning 733, Salinas tallying 732, followed by Leah Pritchett (651), Millican (649), Crampton (532), McMillen (524) and Prock rounding out the grouping with 518 points.<\/p>\n

The role of these nine racers is obvious: They must stop or contain Steve Torrence\u2019s progress towards a second straight NHRA Top Fuel championship. Will they be able to do so in Epping? With hot temps forecast for every day except Sunday and the possibility of scattered thunderstorms on Saturday, conditions should challenge every crew chief and tuner. Even Richard Hogan and \u201cthem CAPCO boys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend\u2019s official entry list shows a field of 13 dragsters for the Top Fuel category, all of them continuing to chase Steve Torrence as he and his team perform at the highest level.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":63547,"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":[5614,2,41,7,1632,1942],"class_list":["post-63546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-drag-racing","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-steve-torrence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/153-SteveTorrence-Sunday-Norwalk-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-gwW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63546","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=63546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63549,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63546\/revisions\/63549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}