Steve Torrence won a marquee match-up with two-time World Champion Brittany Force in the first round of Sunday’s 39th Pep Boys Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, but a challenging racetrack and changing conditions proved to be his undoing against Canadian Dan Mercier.
Against Mercier, who had upset reigning series champ Doug Kalitta in round one, Torrence grabbed a narrow advantage at the start, but little went according to plan thereafter as the four-time world champion’s CAPCO Contractors Top Fuel Toyota lost traction and slowed to 7.014 seconds at only 110 miles per hour.
The loss sent the 55-time Mission Foods tour winner sliding from fourth to fifth place in points as the Countdown to the Championship moves this week to Charlotte, N.C., for the 16th NHRA Carolina Nationals.
When qualifying begins on Friday, the 41-year-old Texan will trail point leader Justin Ashley by 58 points.
“Obviously, that’s not the way we wanted to start the playoffs,” Torrence said, “but we’ve started worse and still won it. We lost in the first round (at Maple Grove) in 2019, but then we won Charlotte and runner-upped at St. Louis.
“So, we’re not out of it, by any means, but we dug ourselves a pretty good hole and we’ll have our backs against the wall the next couple of races,” he said. “The good thing is these CAPCO boys have had a lot of success at Charlotte, St. Louis and Dallas (sites of the next three races).”
The No. 6 qualifier at Maple Grove, Torrence was trying to add a second Pep Boys victory to the one he earned in 2018, the year he became the first and only driver to sweep the six races in the Countdown.
Billy Torrence, founder and CEO of CAPCO and driver of the second of the CAPCO Toyotas, had an even less productive Countdown start, losing in the first round to Tony Stewart.
This story was originally published on September 16, 2024. 
