Steve Torrence Breaks Winless Streak

• Steve Torrence, Tim Wilkerson, Gaige Herrera take home trophies.
• Seattle track president urges racers to show passion and finds himself under fire, yet Todd’s remarks the buzz of the Flav-R-Pac Northwest Nationals.
• With the Camping World Drag Racing Series losing two tracks after this season, Top Fuel’s Clay Millican urges sanctioning body to try a couple of eighth-mile events.

Antron Brown said at the start of the weekend, “We’re coming in hungry, and it’s not for king salmon.” But no one was hungrier than the two Top Fuel finalists, Steve Torrence and Doug Kalitta.

Torrence got his fill of confidence, breaking a 14-race winless streak (since the 2022 St. Louis race) in his third final of the season. This 54th victory put him within two of tying Antron Brown for No. 3 on the all-time Top Fuel list. Torrence won here 10 years after his other triumph at Seattle.

And in doing so, he denied Kalitta his 50th overall victory and extended the Mac Tools Dragster driver’s drought to 57 races. Kalitta recorded his 750th round-win in reaching his second straight final-round appearance.

“You win a lot of these and you get a little bit complacent and maybe not as grateful as you should be,” Torrence, driver of the Capco Contractors Dragster, said. He gave Toyota its 200th drag-racing victory but said what made him sentimental was earning the first victory since losing his maternal grandmother in March.

The four-time Top Fuel champion, who had been on a dominating tear before, he said, going “way off the rails” last season, had spoken for the past couple of races about working to get his “Steve Torrence Swagger” back, said it has been “a mental struggle” to go from intimidator to a driver who saw his rivals “cut my head off at the Tree, outrun me on the track, and made me look like I’d never showed up and done this before.”

Funny Car

Tim Wilkerson won the Funny Car trophy, his second this season and fourth at Seattle but first here since 2011. It came a month to the day after the passing of team co-owner Cathi Maynard. Joe Maynard, who won at Pacific Raceways last year in his first race with Top Fuel’s Tony Schumacher, said, “She’s watching.”

Wilkerson faced a tough lineup of Matt Hagan, Ron Capps, and Blake Alexander to advance to the final against J.R. Todd. He said afterward, “I’m a thorn in their side. And this day I really got to poke ’em all. They know they’ve go to whip my ass if they’re going to do it, but they didn’t get it done today.”

Gaige Herrera has won the first two legs of the NHRA’s Western Swing.

Pro Stock Motorcycle

Pro Stock Motorcycle ace Gaige Herrera won for the fifth time in his class’ seventh appearance on the schedule as he became the first-ever bike winner at Pacific Raceways. He defeated Vance & Hines Mission Suzuki teammate Eddie Krawiec, keeping him from celebrating his 50th victory. Herrera said of Krawiec, “He’s my boss, but the Wally comes home to Vance & Hines. I expected something on the starting line, but he played a fair game.”

The Western Swing is drag racing’s version of the Triple Crown. It’s a challenging series of three races in consecutive weekends that cover more than 2,100 miles of travel and stops at Denver, Seattle, and Sonoma, Calif.—venues with vastly different atmospheric conditions.

Only seven, starting with Top Fuel ace Joe Amato in 1991, have won all three events in the same year. The last to “sweep the Swing” was Top Fuel’s Antron Brown, in 2009. In between, John Force (Funny Car, 1994), Cory McClenathan (Top Fuel, 1997), Larry Dixon (Top Fuel, 2003), Greg Anderson (Pro Stock, 2004), and Tony Schumacher (Top Fuel, 2008) have accomplished the feat.

At the start of the Seattle event, the three racers with a chance to become the eighth to sweep the Swing were Clay Millican (Top Fuel), Matt Hagan (Funny Car), and Gaige Herrera (Pro Stock Motorcycle). As the action shifted to Northern California’s Wine Country, Herrera is the only one of the three still in the hunt.

Points leader Hagan couldn’t get past eventual winner Tim Wilkerson in the first round of Funny Car eliminations, killing his chance to add his name to the Western Swing “sweepers.”

Millican threw away his opportunity in the semifinals against Doug Kalitta, hitting the gas .245 of a second too early and disqualifying his run.

Herrera has a chance to become the first bike racer to sweep the Western Swing. The two-wheeled class never had a chance to do that before. Herrera also could be maybe the last person to do so, assuming the vanishing Denver market won’t be replaced for a new-look Western Swing next year or beyond.

“That’s something we’ve been talking about,” the Vance & Hines racer said. “To be able to come basically as the first time, motorcycles doing the Western Swing, that’s definitely something we’re looking at trying to do. Our main goal right now is to be consistent, go A to B and hopefully come on top and sweep it.” At Sonoma, he’ll participate in the Mission Food #2Fast2Tasty Challenge and the All-Star Call-Out. “So there’s a lot going on in these next two weeks. We’re going to be busy,” Herrera said.

There was no love lost between J.R. Todd, above, and Alex Laughlin on Sunday.

Todd-Laughlin Fued Bubbles Over

At first, it looked like maybe social-media feuders and NHRA Funny Car racers J.R. Todd and Alex Laughlin were playing nicely at the Flav-R-Pac Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways, near Seattle.

But if they had buried the hatchet, it appeared Sunday that they did so in each other’s backs.

They met in the first round of eliminations, and Todd had trouble getting his car to start. Laughlin, driving for drag-racing pioneer “Big Jim” Dunn, waited for Todd’s crew to make the car fire up. Then Laughin’s car experienced mechanical trouble, and his team shut the car off, handing Todd a solo pass into the quarterfinals.

In his top-end interview with Jason Galvin immediately following the run, Todd said, “Really unfortunate to not be able to race against Big Jim Dunn and those guys. He’s a living legend in the sport. I have a lot of respect for him. But maybe that clown driving the car, he ought to keep his mouth shut from now on.”

Laughlin, who earlier in the year had mocked Todd’s Kalitta Motorsports teammate Shawn Langdon for a starting-line mistake and triggered a trash-talking spat, disparaged Todd’s sponsor in a pre-elimination post.

So Todd let his raw emotion spill out in his interview—something that Pacific Raceways president Jason Fiorito had encouraged.

Fiorito found himself under fire this weekend for his own remarks in an Autoweek article. He simply had urged racers to resist the canned, boring, bland top-end remarks and show some passion for a sport that he said is “personal” and adrenaline-filled. But many readers misinterpreted his intention, which was to share their excitement at racing 11,000-horsepower machines the length of two football fields at more than 320 mph for less than four seconds.

Some drag-racing fans chided him for advocating violence, shamed him and said he’s inciting mayhem to sell tickets. But at least one fan from Canada called him and said after reading the article, he had bought tickets and was driving down to Seattle to see what might happen.

A verbal salvo or two is all that the article might have stirred, but Todd’s criticism of his rival had been festering for much of the season.

Todd ended his weekend as Funny Car runner-up to Tim Wilkerson.

NHRA Northwest Nationals

Results, Updated Standings

Finals

Sunday’s final results from the 34th annual Flav-R-Pac NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways. The race is the 11th of 21 in the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series:

Top Fuel — Steve Torrence, 3.940 seconds, 289.26 mph def. Doug Kalitta, 4.861 seconds, 169.21 mph.

Funny Car — Tim Wilkerson, Ford Mustang, 4.007, 321.96 def. J.R. Todd, Toyota Supra, 4.014, 323.27.

Pro Stock Motorcycle — Gaige Herrera, Suzuki, 6.764, 198.99 def. Eddie Krawiec, Suzuki, 6.809, 198.85.

Top Alcohol Dragster — Jackie Fricke, 5.270, 276.13 def. Joey Severance, 8.312, 100.31.

Top Alcohol Funny Car — Doug Gordon, Chevy Camaro, 5.475, 268.60 def. Annie Whiteley, Camaro, 7.379, 137.62.

Competition Eliminator — Joseph Arrowsmith, Pontiac GTO, 9.164, 108.77 def. Cody Lane, Chevy Cavalier, Foul – Red Light.

Super Stock — Rick McKinney, Chevy Camaro, 10.582, 122.50 def. Don Thomas, Pontiac Gran Am, 10.135, 131.88.

Stock Eliminator — Justin Lamb, Chevy Camaro, 9.814, 127.35 def. Greg Kielman, Camaro, 11.676, 111.15.

Super Comp — Garrett Sides, Dragster, 8.912, 181.23 def. Dylan Hough, Dragster, 8.888, 182.03.

Super Gas — Paul Nero, Chevy Corvette, 9.932, 162.45 def. Lindsey Larson, Chevy Corvette, 9.968, 167.05.

Super Street — Brian McGinnis, Chevy, 10.951, 126.79 def. Dustin Ward, dodge Dart, 10.971, 125.19.

Top Dragster — Thomas Bayer, Dragster, 6.148, 231.40 def. Dylan Hough, Dragster, 6.796, 195.90.

Top Sportsman — Mike Ferderer, Pontiac Grand Am, 7.119, 193.85 def. Bryan Warr, Chevy Camaro, 6.775, 199.94.

Junior Dragster Shootout — Ty Gaynor, Halfscale, 8.178, 80.33 def. Cody Mackey, 8.008, 79.06.

Round By Round

TOP FUEL:

ROUND ONE — Shawn Langdon, 3.779, 327.19 def. Antron Brown, 4.755, 156.28; Brittany Force, 3.707, 334.73 def. Austin Prock, 3.738, 325.92; Mike Salinas, 3.768, 291.63 was unopposed; Justin Ashley, 3.740, 327.82 def. Tony Schumacher, 3.785, 326.71; Doug Kalitta, 3.753, 329.99 def. Ron Smith, 4.384, 224.62; Steve Torrence, 3.736, 328.38 def. Josh Hart, 3.750, 331.12; Clay Millican, 3.763, 328.86 def. Leah Pruett, 3.765, 326.56;

QUARTERFINALS — Langdon, 3.792, 324.98 def. Salinas, 4.772, 150.72; Torrence, 3.752, 328.78 def. Force, 8.811, 70.93; Kalitta, 4.975, 144.10 was unopposed; Millican, 3.807, 316.82 def. Ashley, 3.973, 272.78;

SEMIFINALS — Kalitta, 3.813, 328.06 def. Millican, Foul – Red Light; Torrence, 4.016, 272.28 def. Langdon, 4.074, 272.12;

FINAL — Torrence, 3.940, 289.26 def. Kalitta, 4.861, 169.21.

FUNNY CAR:

ROUND ONE — Cruz Pedregon, Dodge Charger, 3.956, 323.50 def. Robert Hight, Chevy Camaro, 4.445, 214.89; Ron Capps, Toyota Supra, 4.481, 243.02 def. Jeff Diehl, Toyota Camry, 12.260, 68.72; John Force, Camaro, 3.925, 323.89 was unopposed; Blake Alexander, Ford Mustang, 4.148, 277.32 def. Bob Tasca III, Mustang, 4.329, 218.55; J.R. Todd, Supra, 3.909, 329.34 def. Alex Laughlin, Charger, Broke; Tim Wilkerson, Mustang, 3.928, 324.83 def. Matt Hagan, Charger, 5.068, 163.63; Chad Green, Mustang, 3.963, 318.32 def. Alexis DeJoria, Supra, 4.176, 234.70;

QUARTERFINALS — Alexander, 5.044, 148.58 was unopposed; Wilkerson, 4.006, 314.61 def. Capps, 4.958, 157.96; Green, 3.979, 319.52 def. Force, 4.229, 255.43; Todd, 3.964, 324.28 def. Pedregon, 4.085, 265.22;

SEMIFINALS — Wilkerson, 4.007, 321.96 def. Alexander, 4.065, 295.34; Todd, 3.988, 320.05 def. Green, 3.974, 321.12;

FINAL — Wilkerson, 4.007, 321.96 def. Todd, 4.014, 323.27.

PRO STOCK MOTORCYCLE:

ROUND ONE — Angie Smith, 6.842, 199.58 def. Chris Bostick, Foul – Red Light; Chase Van Sant, Suzuki, 6.799, 198.58 def. Jianna Evaristo, Suzuki, 6.822, 197.31; Matt Smith, Suzuki, 6.782, 199.11 def. Marc Ingwersen, 6.916, 197.19; Kelly Clontz, Suzuki, 6.847, 196.39 def. Steve Johnson, Suzuki, 7.075, 155.24; Eddie Krawiec, Suzuki, 6.847, 198.26 def. Ryan Oehler, 6.931, 194.24; Hector Arana Jr, 6.836, 200.56 def. Karen Stoffer, Suzuki, 8.119, 115.94; Gaige Herrera, Suzuki, 6.729, 197.36 def. Lance Bonham, Buell, Foul – Red Light;

QUARTERFINALS — Arana Jr, 6.949, 198.88 def. Clontz, 6.985, 193.35; Krawiec, 6.821, 198.23 def. Van Sant, 6.860, 195.96; M. Smith, 6.819, 198.00 def. A. Smith, 6.861, 197.91; Herrera, 6.780, 199.08 was unopposed;

SEMIFINALS — Krawiec, 6.865, 197.54 def. M. Smith, Broke; Herrera, 6.825, 197.16 def. Arana Jr, 6.852, 197.80;

FINAL — Herrera, 6.764, 198.99 def. Krawiec, 6.809, 198.85.

Updated Points Standings

Top Fuel

1. Steve Torrence, 821; 2. Justin Ashley, 817; 3. Leah Pruett, 685; 4. Brittany Force, 684; 5. Austin Prock, 654; 6. Doug Kalitta, 637; 7. Antron Brown, 624; 8. Mike Salinas, 622; 9. Josh Hart, 571; 10. Clay Millican, 568.

Funny Car

1. Matt Hagan, 832; 2. Ron Capps, 815; 3. Alexis DeJoria, 712; 4. Robert Hight, 703; 5. Chad Green, 702; 6. (tie) Bob Tasca III, 660; Tim Wilkerson, 660; 8. John Force, 605; 9. J.R. Todd, 578; 10. Cruz Pedregon, 508.

Pro Stock Motorcycle

1. Gaige Herrera, 796; 2. Hector Arana Jr, 530; 3. Eddie Krawiec, 483; 4. (tie) Matt Smith, 449; Angie Smith, 449; 6. Steve Johnson, 427; 7. Chase Van Sant, 388; 8. Jianna Evaristo, 306; 9. Marc Ingwersen, 290; 10. Kelly Clontz, 262.

Contributing Editor

Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle.  She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.