{"id":2588,"date":"2016-05-01T18:37:03","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T23:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=2588"},"modified":"2016-05-01T18:37:03","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T23:37:03","slug":"texas-steve-torrence-loses-tough-final-round-decision-at-nhra-springnationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/01\/texas-steve-torrence-loses-tough-final-round-decision-at-nhra-springnationals\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas’ Steve Torrence loses tough final round decision at NHRA SpringNationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAYTOWN \u2013 <\/strong>To be the champ, you first have to beat the champ.\u00a0 Steve Torrence<\/strong> finally beat the champ Sunday but, as meaningful as was his first ever head-to-head win against Antron Brown, it didn\u2019t get him or his Capco Contractors\/Rio Ammo Top Fuel dragster into the winners\u2019 circle at the 29th<\/sup> annual NHRA SpringNationals<\/a> at Royal Purple Raceway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"After

After qualifying number one for the third straight race and the fifth time in 11 events dating back to last September, Kilgore\u2019s Steve Torrence was narrowly defeated by Doug Kalitta in the Top Fuel final round on Sunday at the NHRA SpringNationals at Royal Purple Raceway. (NHRA photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

After a dominating performance that included his third consecutive No. 1 start, Torrence came up .019 of second short in the final round to Doug Kalitta, a result that reversed the order of finish at the season-opening Circe K Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.\u00a0 Kalitta\u2019s narrow .036-.058 starting line advantage provided the difference.<\/p>\n

Despite his frustration, Torrence couldn\u2019t be too unhappy.\u00a0 After all, the 33-year-old cancer survivor set a track record at 3.724 seconds, moved up to fourth place in points, beat eight-time World Champion Tony Schumacher in the second round and, after 16 straight disappointments, finally got the better of Brown, earning a 3.730-3.769 victory over the two-time and reigning Mello Yello Champion in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t close the deal and that\u2019s the bottom line,\u201d said the six-time Top Fuel winner.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s a great team over there (Kalitta), but we\u2019ve got a great team, too.\u00a0 The thing is, this isn\u2019t the last time we\u2019re going to see Antron or Doug in the other lane.\u00a0 It\u2019s a long season and we\u2019ve put ourselves back in contention for that championship knowing that we\u2019ve got a great car moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just hate that we had a chance to win a race on one of our home tracks, with all our friends and family watching, and didn\u2019t get it done.\u00a0 Close doesn\u2019t count over here,\u201d said the 2005 Top Alcohol Dragster World Champion.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the tour moves to Atlanta Dragway for the May 13-15 Summit Southern Nationals, Torrence will trail pacesetting Brittany Force by just 47 points, little more than two racing rounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith as good as Richard Hogan and A.J. (tuning consultant Alan Johnson) have this thing running, we could cut the lead to just two rounds by the end of qualifying at Atlanta.\u00a0 It\u2019s possible but then again the car we\u2019re trying to catch is really our team car (Force also gets tuning help from Johnson).\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Torrence\u2019s second strong performance in three years at Houston where he reached the semifinals as the No. 1 qualifier in 2014.\u00a0 He\u2019ll move to Atlanta having started from the No. 1 position in five of the last 11 tour events dating to last September when he qualified No. 1 at St. Louis.<\/p>\n

Story courtesy of Dave Denswood<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAYTOWN \u2013 To be the champ, you first have to beat the champ.\u00a0 Steve Torrence finally beat the champ Sunday but, as meaningful as was his first ever head-to-head win against Antron Brown, it didn\u2019t get him or his Capco Contractors\/Rio Ammo Top Fuel dragster into the winners\u2019 circle at the 29th annual NHRA SpringNationals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[207,194,133,50],"class_list":["post-2588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhra","tag-dave-denswood","tag-nhra-springnationals","tag-royal-purple-raceway","tag-steve-torrence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/089-SteveTorrence-Saturday-Houston.jpg?fit=2200%2C1464&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-FK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2590,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions\/2590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}