Steve Torrence isn’t pushing the panic button.

However, he knows his Capco team needs to step it up right now if he has any chance of winning his fifth-consecutive NHRA Top Fuel world championship.

Torrence took a small step toward that goal by snaring the provisional No. 1 qualifying spot at the Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway in St. Louis Friday.

Torrence clocked a 3.655-second run at 327.43 mph.

“The class has really stepped up and everybody's so quick and so fast right now,” Torrence said. “We needed to run well. We've struggled throughout the year, kind of self-inflicted, but at this time we're trying to get our way back in there. And we've kind of put ourselves behind the eight ball with two non-spectacular starts to the Countdown, and so we needed to run well. And that was great for us to come here. I don't know if that'll stay No. 1, depends on the conditions (Saturday), but I feel like we'll be top three, at least.

“So just a great run for us. I mean we've slowly got to where we need to be and if we can maintain that pace right there and carry it through the rest of the four races, we'll maybe have a shot at this deal.”

Torrence arrived in St. Louis fifth in the points standings 105 points behind leader Justin Ashley with four races remaining in the Countdown counting St. Louis.

“No, I didn't expect it to hold tonight,” said Torrence of his elapsed time. “I thought Brittany (Force) would be able to go a little quicker than that and I think that we may have been a little quicker ourselves. The thing either put a hole out or was down there spinning a little bit at the end, the mph was down. That was our best halftrack speed ever. So that's what we really been working on is trying to get the car to run harder in the middle and be able to run harder out the back door. That's indicative of what we were trying to do and just maybe a little more left in it.”

Torrence believes his Friday night run will benefit him for Saturday’s two qualifying sessions.

“That gives us some luxury to utilize the two runs (Saturday), which will be in the middle of the day, in the sun,” Torrence said. “That will replicate some of the rounds on Sunday. So, we will utilize that to learn, to try to get a set up for raceday, and see if we can't pull one off.”

This season Torrence has one win this season in Brainerd, Minn., and qualified No. 1 in Houston and Epping, N.H. 

“I think it's going to be similar,” said Torrence about Saturday’s weather. “I looked at the weather coming into here and which, ultimately, I have no input on tuning in the race car. They just want me to go out and focus on driving it. But I think that all three days looked like they were going to be pretty close to the same. I think that we'll be able to utilize that data for (Saturday) for certain. This was just a hero run to go out there and see where you could set yourself, and so tomorrow's what we'll really need to use.”

Torrence, who has 52 career wins and 33 No. 1 qualifiers, does love competing in St. Louis.

“I love it,” he said. “We've done really well here in the past. I've had a lot of success and I've been racing here since I was 15, going back and racing Super Comp and coming up here. So, a lot of history, been here quite a bit and had some success and so I love racing here. This place is a great facility, and the fans are awesome.”