Although he is one of the few touring pros to have won every event in the Camping World series at least one time, Steve Torrence admits that there are NHRA venues at which he feels a little more comfortable than he does at Pacific Raceways, site this week of the 34 th FLAV-R-PAC Northwest Nationals.
In point of fact, the four-time world champion has gone longer without a win in the Northwest Nationals than he has at any other event in the series. His one and only success at Pacific Raceways came 11 years ago when he beat Shawn Langdon to the finish to win for just the third win of his then brief pro career.
Fifty tour victories later, the 40-year-old cancer survivor is hoping to add a second “dubbya” to his Seattle resume and keep alive his hopes of winning the largely ceremonial regular season championship for a record fifth time.
Winless so far this season, a streak that extends to October of 2022 when he prevailed in the NHRA Midwest Nationals at St. Louis, Torrence nonetheless is brimming with confidence entering the second stop on a Western Swing that concludes next week at Sonoma, California.
“We’re so close (to putting all the elements together),” said the driver of the CAPCO Contractors Top Fuel Toyota, the only driver ever to have swept the races in the NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship (2018), “but we just haven’t been able to close the deal. Every week, I think, ‘this is the week.’ Well, here we are, and I’m thinking ‘this is the week’ again.”
The Texas cattle rancher and businessman enters the season’s 11th race trailing Justin Ashley by 54 points after beating the point leader in the first round of last week’s Dodge Mile-High Nationals at Denver, Colo. And even though he and his CAPCO boys haven’t yet celebrated in 2023, they led the points after five of the first six races and have maintained a Top 3 presence all season long.
Nevertheless, before he focuses his full attention on the Northwest Nationals, the 53-time tour winner will race Saturday in the Mission Foods 2Fast/2Tasty Challenge, which features semifinalists from the preceding tour event.
This story was originally published on July 19, 2023. 
