Coming off a season in which he won fewer than three tour events for the first time in seven years, and likewise finished the season at a seven-year low in the points standings, four-time NHRA Top Fuel champion champion Steve Torrence is eyeing a return to “beast mode” this week when he drives a re-engineered Capco Contractors dragster in pursuit of the Top Fuel title in the 54th annual Amalie Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway.
“The longer you’re on top, the harder it is to stay there,” Torrence said of a 2022 season in which he slid to sixth place in points while crew chiefs Richard Hogan and Bobby Lagana Jr. transitioned to a new engine and clutch combination.
“The challenge for us is to climb back to the top,” he said. “We had a target on our backs last year [after winning four straight titles] and we were vulnerable because we were making some pretty big mechanical changes, but credit Brittany (Force) and Grubby (crew chief David Grubnic) for stepping up their performance.
“They definitely earned [the championship], but now they’re the ones with the target on their backs.”
Zeroing in on that bullseye, Torrence and his “Capco Boys” will try to win the Gatornationals for the second time in four years.
When he won in 2020, the 39 year-old Texan did so at the wheel of a tribute car built to recall “Swamp Rat 14,” the dragster designed, driven and maintained by Florida legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, the car that changed the face of drag racing in the 1970s as the first rear-engine winner on the NHRA tour.
This time he’ll try to affect the same result without the Garlits’ influence in an event that always is a homecoming for Hogan, the Florida native whose dad, the late Charley “The King” Hogan, was a Garlits’ contemporary and one of his most formidable rivals.
Although he won but twice last year (after 43 victories the previous five seasons), Torrence was a top four driver throughout the regular season and still was in contention for a fifth title until first round losses in two of the last three events of the Countdown.
Before he launches his bid for a season-opening victory, though, he first will focus on successfully defending his title in the Pep Boys All-Star Call Out, a bonus race for touring pros contested in conjunction with Saturday qualifying. It offers up an $80,000 top prize independent of the Gatornationals purse.
The Call Out’s unique format gives the top-seeded drivers the option of…
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