Closing in on another milestone in the NHRA Mission Foods Series, four-time World Champion Steve Torrence will try to win his 500th competitive round this week when he sends his CAPCO Contractors Top Fuel Toyota to the line in the 11th NHRA New England Nationals.<\/p>\n
On the way to 54 pro tour victories, Torrence has won 497 rounds, three shy of joining an exclusive club that includes one of his racing idols, fellow Texan and six-time series champ Kenny Bernstein.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJoining Kenny, Tony (Schumacher) and A.B. (Antron Brown) would be an awesome deal,\u201d Torrence said, \u201cbut the truth is, I didn\u2019t win all those races or all those rounds.\u00a0 I\u2019m just the guy who gets to drive this bad ass hot rod.\u00a0These \u2018bad to the bone\u2019 CAPCO boys are the ones who do the work; they\u2019re the ones that have put me in this position.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The all-concrete surface at New England Dragway would seem the perfect stage for the 41-year-old Texan\u2019s latest achievement.\u00a0Not only is he one of two Top Fuel drivers to have won multiple times at Epping (along with Schumacher), he also is the track record holder for time at 3.664 seconds, a mark he established in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To reach his new benchmark, though, the former Top Alcohol Dragster World Champion (2005) will have to advance to the final round this weekend, something he has been unable to manage thus far in a season in which he has been stuck in the semifinals (losing in the penultimate round on four separate occasions, most recently in the Gerber Route 66 Nationals at Chicago).<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he comes in as the No. 4 Top Fuel driver in the Mission Foods championship chase behind only Justin Ashley, Shawn Langdon and Doug Kalitta who, between them, have won five of the six races contested thus far.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fact that this week\u2019s race is contested on one of the tour\u2019s five all-concrete tracks merely adds to the veteran\u2019s growing confidence insomuch as he and his CAPCO boys have won 14 times over the last eight seasons on tracks which don\u2019t have a transition point from concrete to asphalt.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The significance is that no other Top Fuel driver has won more than four times on all-concrete tracks during that span, which is why the only driver ever to have swept the races in NHRA\u2019s Countdown to the Championship (2018) is so anxious to get his car back onto the surface of New Hampshire\u2019s only active dragstrip.<\/p>\n
Still, there may be a driver even more excited about the series\u2019 easternmost stop than Steve and that is his dad, Billy, driver of the second CAPCO Toyota and the only driver in the field who is undefeated at New England Dragway.<\/p>\n
The founder and CEO of CAPCO, the Texas-based oil and gas pipeline construction and maintenance business, won the race in 2021 in his only previous appearance and did so from the No. 1 qualifying position.<\/p>\n
Top Fuel qualifying in the New England Nationals is scheduled for 4:30 and 7 p.m., Texas time, on Friday.\u00a0Saturday\u2019s 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., Texas time, sessions will conclude with rounds of the #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, in which the younger Torrence will square off with Antron Brown.\u00a0Racing Sunday begins at 10 a.m., Texas time.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on May 29, 2024. <\/p>\n
The post Epping a Welcome Sight for Capco Crew<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Closing in on another milestone in the NHRA Mission Foods Series, four-time World Champion Steve Torrence will try to win his 500th competitive round this week when he sends his CAPCO Contractors Top Fuel Toyota to the line in the 11th NHRA New England Nationals. On the way to 54 pro tour victories, Torrence has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}