Steve Torrence is a Texas boy.

No matter where he goes, the Lone Star State is not far from his mind. So when Torrence has an opportunity to return home and race within driving distance of his hometown, he is more than excited about the challenge. Especially after having not hoisted a trophy in his home state since winning the Top Alcohol Dragster championship back in 2005.

“I haven’t won in Texas since the Alcohol days. So, yeah, it would be a big deal,” Torrence said. “Houston is one of the racetracks I get to call home, so it is really gratifying to be able to run well in front of the hometown crowd and friends and family I have grown up racing with. We just have a lot of support here.”

And Torrence got his quest for a Texas Wally off to a tremendous start on Friday, blasting to the provisional top spot on the Top Fuel charts at the NHRA Spring Nationals at Royal Purple Raceway in Houston.

“The guys have worked really, really hard to get the car to the performance level it is at right now,” Torrence said. “The performance we have had on race day is not indicative of what we have done in qualifying. It’s not that we have gone out and had one hit wonders. We have run really well through qualifying, we just need to relate that into our raceday setups.”

Torrence piloted the Capco Contractors/Rio Ammunition dragster to the provisional pole with a 3.725-second run at 329.42 mph, a new track record for elapsed time. Doug Kalitta is qualified second with a 3.743 at 324.36 mph, followed by Clay Millican (3.743), Richie Crampton (3.752) and Antron Brown (3.753).

If Torrence’s Friday pass holds, it would be his fourth top qualifier award of the year and third in a row after having previously topped the field in Pomona, Las Vegas and Charlotte.

“I think that Richard (Hogan) is gaining more confidence in the way that the car is running and I think we can consistently go out there and do well,” Torrence said. “The last few races we went out early and we are trying to change that. The field is so tight right now that you have to gain every possible point that you can and not leave anything on the table. Right now those Schumacher cars are not running the best, but it won’t be long before they do.”

Torrence is optimistic that his numbers from Friday will hold until Sunday with heavy rains forecasted for Saturday. And with that impending threat, Torrence and his team threw everything they had at the track on Friday with hopes of setting themselves up for race day.

“We were able to go out and run a nice solid run in Q1, so that gave us a little bit of freedom and breathing room to be able to go out and stand on it knowing that the 77 would probably stay somewhere close to the top half,” Torrence said. “Given the conditions and the forecast for tomorrow, it was imperative to go out and run well both laps today and set yourself up for Sunday because you may not make any laps tomorrow and the conditions may not be as good as they have been.”

No matter what the conditions may hold over the next two days, Torrence is confident that his team can overcome any obstacles with Alan Johnson continuing to make a huge difference in the performance of the team with the de facto team of Torrence and Brittany Force combining to win three of the first five races this season.

“We have done as well as any single car team out here for the last four years. But you find yourself asking, ‘why am I still beating my head against the wall as a one car team?’ We don’t have the funding to run two cars, they are not running two cars over there with Brittany, so when Alan came available, it was just a perfect fit for both of us,” Torrence said. “We are racing Kalitta and Schumacher and these other teams that have multiple cars and you just get so much more data every time those two cars go down the track. It is a huge advantage.

“Creating that same scenario and sharing information has catapulted the performance of both of our cars to the top. We were one and two after the first session and of the first five races, we have won three of them. It is really paying huge dividends.”

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