“I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to dominate like we did before,” Steve Torrence said, referring to his 43 Camping World Drag Racing Series victories in one five-year period (2017-2021).

In general, his peers agree. The consensus seems to be that that’s true for the foreseeable future.

Three-time Top Fuel champion and Hall of Famer Larry Dixon, who waged fierce battles in the early 2000s with yet another king of the class in Tony Schumacher and remains second to Schumacher in overall victories with 62, weighed in on the discussion.

“I think teams that compete at a championship level will have a combination of driver/crew/crew chief/funding that are obviously operating at a level higher than everyone else for a given amount of time and will stay there until there’s a chink in the armor" -- meaning, a change in driver/crew/crew chief/funding -- "or a rule change/point format or another team flat steps up and tops what they are doing,” Dixon said. 

“At that point can that given team reset (fix what is lacking) or is their run done?” he asked. “We’ve seen Alan Johnson reset quite a few times over the years with different drivers/teams/funding.

“With that said, I’d be shocked if it never happened again,” Dixon said.

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Top Fuel’s Justin Ashley said, “I think that records are meant to be broken. And sure, I think eventually someone will dominate the class like he has. But right now, with the state of the class the way it is, I find it hard to believe that you will have someone that much ahead of everyone else.

“Just the competition out here is so, so good,” Ashley added. "You have multiple race winners, multiple champions, and then even part-time cars who are really, really good cars that could very easily be full-time cars. So I do think that, yeah, eventually, maybe down the road, somebody can dominate like he has. But right now, with the current state of Top Fuel the way it is, I think it will be too difficult to do.

“That's kind of where my head is at. I can't imagine it being anytime soon,” he said. “You almost have to have four perfect rounds of racing on Sunday to just give yourself a chance. No matter where you line up, even in the short fields, it just makes it that much harder, because your match-up in Round 1 is probably going to be pretty tough. It's the best certainly I've ever seen. I think it's the most competitive ever.

“That's the interesting thing, right? It's like everyone always talks about, ‘Oh, on paper it's supposed to be great,’ but it's difficult to actually live up to that. And it did last year in 2022, and now 2023. Yeah, it's literally that much better,” Ashley said.

This season officially isn’t five races old yet, but Ashley said it “seems like a grind because you never take it for granted, no matter who you're racing. In other words, it's just like Rounds 1 through 4. Most of the time it feels like a final round. Starting in Round 1, where you used to kind of work your way up through to the final round, it would be the two best cars on the property. But now there's so many good cars that it feels like that much more of a grind because every single round, the margin for error is just so small.”

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And Antron Brown, the three-time Top Fuel champion, concurred.

“The domination days, I think, are gone, because, think about it, Tony Schumacher did it for a stint of time for like eight years in a row," he said. "Steve did really good for four years. But of those four years, there's a lot of teams in transition. Just like back in the day, you only have four good cars. But Steve dominated when the competition was still tough. He wasn't outrunning people by a tenth of a second, like [tuner] Alan Johnson and Tony Schumacher used to do back in the day. So he did something really special, and it all lined up at the right time, and his team just got to give him credit. But I don't think you're going to see it.

“I think you can see teams get in the groove. You might see that some more. I think as technology advances, more of these teams are just getting better and better. And the talent pool is moving around and it's rising,” he said.

“I think now, just to win a championship beside itself is like winning two championships that Steve Torrence did, or even a championship that I won," Brown said. "The competition was tough when I did it, but it's at a whole different level now – way different level now. Back when we won our championships, you probably had about five or six cars that could win on any given Sunday. Steve won a championship, it was the same, but he was more of a dominant car. And our team, honestly, we didn't run that good when he won all his championships. Now, I would say you got 12 teams that can win on any given Sunday. I think the top competition has doubled since then.”

What Brown said he’s seeing is “just way more parity. The parts haven't changed, and everybody's been able to massage your stuff. And you have guys that have been rising up, like your Neal Strausbaugh, crew chief on Leah's [Pruett’s] car, doing a great job. They got the funding, and Leah's doing great. Austin Prock’s coming in the picture. His car is running great. Doug Kalitta’s [and] Shawn Langdon's [cars are] running really good. Josh Hart ... you go down the list ... Clay Millican ... You could name any team like the top 12 that go to every race. They can win on any given Sunday.

“You have to get on a roll where you're dominant because everybody's car can run just as good as the other person's car right now,” Brown said. “The hard part is I don't ever think you want to see the competition go down. If you look over the course of the last 10 years, the competition just gets better and better every year.”