Coming off an encouraging test session, four-time world champion Steve Torrence tries to end his season on a high note this week when he sends his CAPCO Contractors Toyota after the Top Fuel championship in the 40th annual Texas Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex.
It will be a rare home game for the 56-time NHRA tour winner who hopes to ride the support of family, friends and fellow Texans straight into a winners’ circle he last visited in 2020.
“Always look forward to it,” the 42-year-old said of an event in which he has raced in the final round six of the last 10 years. “We’ve made a lot of friends and a lot of memories and looking forward to making a few more this weekend.”
Amid changing priorities relating to his growing family and CAPCO, the pipeline construction company founded 30 years ago by his dad, Billy, the Texas rancher and businessman has opted out of the final two races of the 2025 season.
“With the championship pretty much out of our reach, going out west for the last two races really didn’t make much sense,” he said, “especially since we have holidays coming up that we all want to make special for the girls (daughters Haven Charli and Harper).”
That means that this weekend’s race, the centerpiece of the track’s “Stampede of Speed,” will offer up one final opportunity for Torrence and his CAPCO boys to extend to 14 the number of consecutive seasons in which they have started at least one event from the No. 1 starting position.
Nevertheless, the future Hall of Famer is quick to emphasize that extending that streak is not a priority.
“We’re going to the Motorplex with a plan to win the race no matter where we start,” said the only driver to have won NHRA championships in both the Top Fuel and Top Alcohol divisions. “We had a good test last week in Indianapolis so we’ll see what we can do.”
Despite running an abbreviated schedule this season, racing in only 10 of the 14 races leading up to the Countdown, the Motorplex track record-holder (at 3.636 seconds) won the Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol, Tenn., to extend to 13 the number of successive campaigns in which he has won at least one tour event.
Nevertheless, his winning ways at the Motorplex began long before he first climbed into the cockpit of a 12,000 horsepower Top Fuel dragster. In 2005, he won in back-to-back weekends on the all-concrete track, prevailing in the Texas Fall Nationals seven days before winning a Lucas Oil Division race at the same venue that, for all intents, locked up the NHRA World Championship in the Top Alcohol Dragster class.
One of the Texan’s fondest Motorplex memories is racing and beating his dad in the 2020 Top Fuel final a year after Billy won his own trophy in the Texas Fall Nationals.
Nitro qualifying begins with a pair of sessions at 5:15 and 8 p.m., Texas time, on Friday. Qualifying continues Saturday with Top Fuel sessions at 12 noon and 2:30 p.m. Singleliminations finals start Sunday at 10 a.m., Texas time.
This story was originally published on October 8, 2025. 
The post Steve Torrence to Close Out 2025 Season With ‘Home Game’ at Texas NHRA FallNationals first appeared on Drag Illustrated.