Torrence to Semifinals at Chicago

Steve Torrence powered his CAPCO Contractors Top Fuel Toyota past point leader Shawn Langdon in the second round of Sunday’s 25th Gerber Collision Route 66 Nationals at the Chicagoland Speedway complex, but the four-time World Champion couldn’t handle eventual race winner Tony Stewart in the semifinals and again was denied a record-extending victory on the Mission Foods pro tour.

“We just can’t seem to put everything together for four rounds,” said the 55-time tour winner, “and when you’ve had the success this team has had, that’s really frustrating. 

“We did some testing at Indy early in the week and we felt really good about where we were,” said the only driver to have swept the races in NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship (2018).

“The win against Shawn was big, yes, but you gotta be good four times on Sunday and we weren’t.  There’s no magic.  We just have to keep putting ourselves in position (to win) and eventually we’ll turn that corner.” 

Coming in, the 42-year-old rancher and businessman had won two of his previous five starts at Route 66 Raceway, a track on which he was the elapsed time record holder before Doug Kalitta took that away during qualifying with a time of 3.661.

The next opportunity to extend a winning streak that dates back to 2015 will come June 1 when the Mission Foods tour moves to New England Dragway for the 12th NHRA New England Nationals.  

Torrence is the New England Dragway track record holder for elapsed time at 3.664 seconds and has won the New England Nationals two times in his last six appearances.

Although he failed to extend Top Fuel racing’s longest active winning streak, the semifinal finish did enable the Texan to move up two spots to No. 8 in the standings even though he opted out of one of the season’s first six events.