As promised, Steve Torrence hosted Antron Brown at his Kilgore, Texas, home for a few days after Brown beat him in the final round of the most recent race near Dallas.

Torrence jokingly hinted that Texas hospitality wasn’t uppermost in his mind. “My only chance [to win the championship] was to hold Antron hostage for a couple weeks in Kilgore,” he said. But Brown had the cowboy hat traditionally awarded to the winner of the AAA Texas FallNationals, so Torrence had to school him in cowboy life, Texas style.

Together they enjoyed eating barbecue, Mexican food, and pecan cobbler – and target shooting with everything from rifles to shotguns to fully automatic machine guns and Rambo-like 50-caliber weapons.

“He was really good at it,” Torrence said of Brown’s aim. “He picked it right up. It was a lot of fun, something different for us to do away from the races. It’s been a long season and it’s nice to be able to just relax with good food and good friends.”

The two have become even closer friends during the past three years, attending Bible study together along with about a dozen others at the racetrack, often in Torrence’s Capco Contractors / Rio Ammunition Dragster pit.

“It’s nice to have someone to depend on who you can talk to about something besides racing,” Torrence said.  “Antron is just a good Christian guy leading by example. I hope I’m doing the same thing. I think we make each other better on the track and off.”

Both have had outstanding seasons. While Torrence hasn’t produced numbers as gaudy as Brown’s, he has won twice, at the season-opener at Pomona, Calif., and at the Summernationals at Englishtown, N.J. So each swiped a victory in the other’s home arena. Torrence knows he won’t show up Brown in the Countdown. Nevertheless, he said, “We’re still marching forward. We’re going to do the best we can to finish as strong as we can in what has been our best season as a team and my best season as a driver.”