Top Fuel<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Top-Fuel-Winner.jpg\")
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Although the current king of Top Fuel has been enjoying the view from the top of the Countdown to the Championship points lead, surrendering the top spot to rival Brittany Force at zMAX Dragway, left Steve Torrence and his Capco Contractors team with a bad taste in their mouths. Seven days after he surrendered the top spot to rival Brittany Force, Torrence quickly addressed the issue by claiming his ninth win of the season in St. Louis. Despite not having the quickest car, Torrence was never off the pace set by the leaders. In qualifying, Torrence ran a 3.697-second pass, but trailed Salinas and Force, who exchanged haymakers with runs of 3.652 and 3.663 that are among the quickest in the history of the class. Throughout his career, Torrence has always been more content to made headlines on Sunday than on Friday or Saturday and he was content to do just that in St. Louis after a rough start earlier in the weekend, Torrence would once again take off on Sunday with victories against Shawn Langdon, Antron Brown, and last weekend\u2019s Top Fuel winner Josh Hart.<\/p>\n
These wins would lead to a final round battle against Mike Salinas and his Scrappers team. Despite being in trouble early in the final when Salinas left with a .011 reaction time, the Scrappers car drifted towards the centerline at half-track and Torrence took advantage of the miscue with a 3.736-second pass to seal the win and extend his advantage over the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis win felt so great,\u201d said Torrence. \u201cI have been No. 1 all year except for the first race and the last race. I am confident in my ability to do the job and the way my team and I work together just makes me better every year. That final was crazy! I was waiting and Mike\u2019s top bulb was on. I was in the process of bumping in, and his top bulb went out. I don\u2019t think he meant to do it, but it was a distraction. I looked up and the lights were on. I knew I was dead late, but I was gaining on him at half-track, and I saw he was close to the centerline. I finally saw my win light, which made me realize that some days it\u2019s better to be lucky than good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanks to his latest victory, Torrence sits atop the Top Fuel points battle as the Countdown to the Championship nears its conclusion.<\/p>\n
Funny Car<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Funny-Car-Winner.jpg\")
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Torrence wouldn\u2019t be the only past champion to reclaim his throne in St. Louis. After missing two races due to COVID-19, Matt Hagan came into the NHRA Midwest Nationals just five points out of the lead in what is shaping up to be one of the most competitive Funny Car points battles in years. Making a clean sweep of the Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway, Hagan began his weekend with the quickest run of qualifying with a 3.868, which gave him a chance to make a free pass with a bye run in the opening round. Hagan then tacked on wins against fellow world champs J.R. Todd and Cruz Pedregon. Hagan\u2019s race against Pedregon was typical of the current state of Funny Car racing with an even start, followed by a close 3.92-second to 3.95-second race that fell in Hagan\u2019s favor. Hagan also made one of the best runs of Sunday\u2019s eliminations with a 3.894-second pass in his win against J.R. Todd.<\/p>\n
This would line Hagan up alongside Bob Tasca III in Sunday\u2019s final. Thanks to a final pass of 3.933-seconds the driver whose season looked in doubt due to an invisible virus, left St. Louis with a 59-point advantage over the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am humbled and grateful to be where I am right now,\u201d said Hagan. \u201cI dealt with COVID for a couple of weeks and there were a couple of times where you\u2019re like \u2018Man, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to pull through this.\u2019 It\u2019s one of those things where it humbled me and I\u2019m glad to be back out here with you guys having fun and winning trophies. It was a slugfest all weekend. Everyone was making great runs and it\u2019s pretty incredible to be a part of it and hang on to it. I\u2019ve never won at this track, but I won Denver earlier this year, so we are clicking them off and every round matters. I have won three world championships and been runner-up twice and you know how to deal with the pressure. I don\u2019t care who you are, it\u2019s still pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pro Stock<\/strong><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Pro-Stock-Winner.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\nThe final former world championship victory of the Midwest Nationals weekend would come from Pro Stock femme fatale Erica Enders. After beginning her weekend from the No. 5 qualifying spot, Enders raced her way to Sunday\u2019s final round after taking down fellow former World Champion Bo Butner, as well as the newest Factory Stock champion Aaron Stanfield and finally Mason McGaha before lining up alongside Dallas Glenn for Sunday\u2019s final round. Although Glenn would leave the line first with an almost perfect .001 reaction time and made a very competitive run with a 6.583-seconds in his RAD Torque Systems Camaro, this wouldn\u2019t be enough as Enders countered with a .010 light of her own and a final 6.572-second final pass.<\/p>\n
For Enders, the win was much needed after she\u2019d fallen 65 points behind rival Greg Anderson as both drivers battle for their fifth Pro Stock world championship. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it is about this win, but I love it,\u201d said Enders. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it is about this facility. I have been coming here since we were kids with our Super Comp dragsters. It is a blast and I really enjoy it. I knew it was going to be close. I was legging it and shoving the throttle pedal through the firewall. We just needed to have Greg stumble a little and we needed to go to work on our program and I needed to work on myself because I have been struggling a bit. These kids are keeping us honest and making us work for it. It is going to definitely be a dog fight as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
These three champions will have a chance to continue on their successful pace as the Countdown to the Championship continues at the Texas NHRA FallNationals (Oct. 7-10) at the Texas Motorplex. Stay tuned to RacingJunk.com<\/a> for the latest news from the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although a trip to the home of motorsports would give NHRA Camping World drag racing rookies a chance to shine, a journey to the Midwest would give three former champions a chance to rise back to the top.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":81468,"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":[3465,17,3470,5029,3399,22],"tags":[2,38,41,7,4801,1632,73],"class_list":["post-81467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-guest-column","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","category-event-coverage","tag-drag-racing","tag-funny-car","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-pro-stock","tag-racing","tag-top-fuel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Midwest-Nationals_Feature-e1632788926242.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-lbZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81467","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\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81472,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81467\/revisions\/81472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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