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Leah Pritchett (Photo by Marc Gewertz\/NHRA)<\/p><\/div>\n
Pritchett, who drives the Papa John\u2019s dragster for Don Schumacher Racing, rolled to her third victory of the season after she outraced Texan Steve Torrence in the final round on Sunday at the 30th annual NHRA SpringNationals at Royal Purple Raceway.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Southern Californian, who lives near Indianapolis, had a winning run clocked at 3.781 seconds, 321.96 mph. Torrence crossed the stripe in 3.787 at 322.11 mph in his Capco Contractors dragster. The margin of victory was only seven feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe meter is as much pegged as it was in Pomona and then in Phoenix,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cI fell off in Gainsville and didn\u2019t make it to the final in Vegas. We said that going into the final that this was our bounce back race.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Leah Pritchett (Photo by Marc Gewertz\/NHRA)<\/p><\/div>\n
Torrence, who resides in Kilgore, has eight career Top Fuel victories, but his bid to win his first race in his home state fell short on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is getting\u2019 old,\u201d Torrence said. \u201cI know races like that are fun for the fans, but they\u2019re hard on us drivers. To get so close to a win here the last two years, to have my guys give me such a good race car and then to come up that short, all you can do is suck it up and get back to work. If there\u2019s a good thing, it\u2019s that we\u2019ll be back racing again in five days and maybe put this one behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pritchett\u2019s victory was the fourth of her career. She has won three of the five events this season and she heads into the Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte next weekend with a 54-point lead over her DSR teammate Antron Brown.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that we want to keep it interesting and everything but our goal was to leave with the points lead and that was not easy at all,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cAntron gave us a total run for his money and obviously so did Steve but I\u2019ve never really been in a position to be counting points so early in the season but I am definitely enjoying that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Leah Pritchett (Photo courtesy of Don Schumacher Racing)<\/p><\/div>\n
Pritchett becomes the 21st different driver in NHRA history to win at Royal Purple Raceway and she is the first female driver to win in the Top Fuel class at this track.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis track and this facility is a phe nomenal place,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cThis race surface is a little bit different, mainly specifically for my chassis. It\u2019s a little bit lumpy down track. I hold on to the steering wheel a little bit tight and I make even quicker movements. It\u2019s a different animal to drive here on this track.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pritchett, who qualified sixth, advanced to the final round by defeating Scott Palmer, Doug Kalitta and Antron Brown, which set up the matchup against Torrence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a select number of drivers that we really, really get up for,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cI know Steve really well and he is a great family friend. I knew that he was going to be after me. I told myself that I have nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torrence, who qualified fourth, advanced to the finals by defeating Shawn Reed, Troy Coughlin Jr. and No. 1 qualifier Clay Millican before seeing Pritchett in the final round.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a driver you are always thinking about not red lighting and you\u2019re not supposed to be thinking about that at all,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cYou have nothing to lose so get after it. You don\u2019t need to be shallow in the final round. We were both right there with the tree and he was right next to me going down the track.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Pritchett crossed the finish line she said that she was unsure that she had actually won the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest I did not see the win light,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cI crossed the finish line and didn\u2019t see it. The only way of knowing that we won was to look at the top-end camera. It wasn\u2019t until I made the turn that I could see that the camera was following me and how close it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pritchett, who is led by crew chief Todd Okuhara and assistant Joe Barlam, now has a 15-2 record in eliminations.<\/p>\n
\u201cDSR has really shown that we have the proper ingredients for success and a smart part of that,\u201d Pritchett said. \u201cI am very privileged and blessed to be standing here today.\u201d<\/p>\n
After five events, the Don Schumacher dragsters, consisting of Pritchett, Brown and Tony Schumacher, have won all of the races so far this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe DSR cars?\u201d Torrence said. \u201cThey\u2019ve won everything (all five races to date) and somebody has to stop \u2018em. It might as well be us. The big thing is we\u2019ve got our hot rod back where it needs to be. We struggled on Friday but (crew chief) Richard Hogan, (car chief) Bobby Lagana and A.J. (consultant Alan Johnson) got everything figured out and the last two days it was a bad hombre.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to remind yourself that it\u2019s a long season but, as a racer, you want to kick their butts every week. We\u2019re going on to Charlotte with a \u2018kick their butts\u2019 attitude and see if we can hurt some feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mike Haag BAYTOWN, Texas \u2013 Leah Pritchett has quickly become a dominant force on the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel circuit this season. Pritchett, who drives the Papa John\u2019s dragster for Don Schumacher Racing, rolled to her third victory of the season after she outraced Texan Steve Torrence in the final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8531,"comment_status":"closed","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":[6,194,133],"class_list":["post-8525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhra","tag-nhra","tag-nhra-springnationals","tag-royal-purple-raceway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/073-LeahPritchett-Sunday-HoustonCeleb.jpg?fit=2250%2C1497&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-2dv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525","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=8525"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8547,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525\/revisions\/8547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}