STEVE TORRENCE GETS A START IN SEATTLE WITH A PROVISIONAL QUALIFYING SPOTTLE OF #1

Top Fuel star Steve Torrence knows all about winning races and world championships.

The Kilgore, Texas, driver has won 54 Wallys and captured four world titles between 2018 and 2021.

Still, it’s been a year since Torrence was among the winners and he’s looking to make it big again this weekend at the Northwest Nationals in Seattle.

Torrence took a positive step toward achieving that goal by capturing the provisional top qualifying spot with a blistering time of 3.688 seconds and a track record speed of 335.32 mph at Pacific Raceways.

This was the first time drivers qualified under floodlights at Pacific Raceways.

“That was really cool,” Torrence said. “There were a lot of fans here to race in front of at night. It’s late. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning where I come from. It was special. The owners of the track here and the people here at Pacific Raceways have done a great job of putting on a good show for the fans, and that’s what it’s all about. We’ve got to make sure people are here watching us and seeing us and enjoying what we do.

“To run 335 (mph), that’s a solid run. (Friday night) is a hero’s race for all of us and it’s not really going to have any relevance to (Saturday) or race day, but you can pat yourself on the back a little bit and say, ‘We had a low ET and we were No. 1. I think that will keep us safe for the rest of the weekend and now we can get ready for race day. My dad’s car was running fine and it looked like he broke a fuel line. The visor on his helmet is cracked and the windshield is cracked and that’s a product of nitrous.”

Billy Torrence, Steve’s father, is 11th in the field with a best time from Friday of 3.872 seconds at 315.19 mph.

If Steve retains his spot, it would be his second No. 1 finish of the season (he was also No. 1 in Phoenix) and the 39th of his decorated career.

“It was a great day, a great weekend and a good way to start it,” Steve said. “We love racing here. We’ve had a lot of success here in the past, and maybe we can get the monkey off our back. It’s been a year since we haven’t won the race, and I haven’t been away that long in a long time, and we’re trying to turn our luck around.”

Steve won Top Fuel Wallys in Seattle in 2012 and 2023. A year ago he defeated Doug Kalitta in the final.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to win at each of those race tracks, so you have a bit of mojo or confidence that you can build on the past,” he said, “but you still have to look at your car and the performance and how you’ve driven and everything, and just use that to motivate yourself, and the car will come.

“The car is working well. It was difficult on the hotter tracks in the summer, but I think we showed that we had a really good car at the start of the year, and this is a trend back to cooler conditions and that’s what we need to be in when we go into the last six (in the Countdown) for the championship. I think we’ve changed our approach to racing for a championship, because at the end of the day it’s the last six. It’s not the whole season, it’s preparing for the last six and being ready for the bear.”

Torrence arrived in Seattle fifth in the standings, thanks to five semifinal appearances, including the final race in Norwalk, Ohio, on June 30. Billy Torrence is seventh in the points thanks to a second-place finish in the season opener in Gainesville, Florida, to Shawn Langdon.

Steve also admitted that he and his father’s dragsters have been dealing with more broken parts than usual this season.

“Yeah, that’s been the culprit for a lot of things in my car, in my dad’s car,” Steve said. “Some of the things you break, the technology hasn’t changed in years. So, you look back and … we find weak links in some of the things we do. So we’ve been able to modify them, change them, get them back to where they need to be or strengthen them. But yeah, we break things that shouldn’t break, and we break them, and I don’t think we’re the only ones that have that problem.

“You look at these cars and you look at the power they make, you go 335 (mph), you go 337, 338. It just takes power. Speed ​​is power. We’ve been trying to develop this power for a couple of years. We’ve got the power, now we’re trying to figure out how to manage it, basically.”

A year ago, Torrence fought to the end, but then lost a world championship to Doug Kalitta and finished second in the standings.

“You absolutely have to be in the top five for stroke distance to try and chase that championship,” he said. “You can win it anywhere, but you give yourself a better advantage if you’re closer, because you want to be able to control your own destiny and not rely on other people’s mistakes to get around them, because when the Countdown starts, when the conditions cool down, the tracks are fantastic like this, more often than not, you’re going to be running low 70s or better every lap, and that’s where we need to be.”