>>BACK

For Immediate Release
Contact: Joe Sherk, jlsherk@aol.com/360-981-4806, mobile

 

TORRENCE GOES AFTER MORE ROUND WINS AT ATLANTA

May 2, 2012 -- Happy with the direction his Top Fuel team is going – that would be up in NHRA’s Full Throttle series standings – Steve Torrence is enthusiastic about going back to work Friday at Atlanta Dragway.

The Summit Racing Equipment Southern Nationals comes four days after one of his most satisfying performances in the Torrence Racing/Capco Contractors Inc. dragster in Sunday’s race near Houston. 

Among his accomplishments were career bests in elapsed time (3.772 seconds) and speed (322.88 mph).   He was the number two and qualifier drove into to the semifinals for the second time in the last three events.  When it was over, Torrence had moved from seventh into sixth place in points with 11 of 17 regular-season races remaining. 

“Going racing again so quickly lets you stay in your routine (as a driver) much better than waiting almost two weeks between races,” commented Torrence, who has 54 starts in Top Fuel, the last nine in his dragster.   “Everybody on the team has the same mind-set.  I will have more confidence getting in the car when qualifying begins on Friday. 

“The car ran consistently at Houston and we are bringing that momentum with us to Atlanta.”

Torrence has little professional racing history at the Commerce, Ga. track.  He qualified 16th in 2010 and didn’t make last year’s starting line-up. 

“When we qualify there,” he said, “we will have done better than last year.  Now we want to do much better than that.  We want to get the Capco car into the winner’s circle.  We are going to take it one race and one lap at a time to get it done.”

While his crew has been sharpening its skills, so has Torrence.  The more laps he makes, the better his reactions are to the nuances of his 8,000-horsepower dragster. 

For example, he noticed something important while recalling his close semifinal loss to Antron Brown at Houston.  The winning margin was five-thousandths of a second.

“We were side-by-side when our tires started smoking and we both started to pedal (the throttle) at about the same time,” Torrence recalled.  “That’s something a driver has to react to.  If I’d thought about it, it would have been too late.

“I’m really looking forward to this race.  We want to continue our consistency and go more rounds on Sunday.”

# # #

 

download release as .doc file