STEVE TORRENCE
struggled to reach the winner ’ s circle until just recently . How challenging was that for you as a driver ? You think it ’ s challenging , but we went 15 races without winning a race or something like that . There ’ s guys that ’ ve gone 15 years or their whole career without winning a race . So I think we just set the bar so ridiculously high for ourselves . Up until this year , we hadn ’ t gone more than three races without winning a race , is what somebody had told me . It ’ s all in perspective . When you set the bar that high and you win 11 out of 20 races or nine out of 22 or whatever we ’ ve done in the last few years , it ’ s just people expect you to win .
I got frustrated with them because it ’ s like , OK , look , guys . We ’ re second in the points , third in the points , fourth in the points . We haven ’ t fallen any lower than fourth in the points during the entire season . The two or three people that were ahead of us have won multiple races . There ’ s even people behind us who ’ ve won races . Clearly we ’ re not doing that bad ; it just isn ’ t up to the standard that we had set that everybody expected .
You kind of take it as a compliment . You ’ re like , well , damn , they ’ re talking crap because we haven ’ t won a race in 15 races , but we ’ ve been to a couple finals and we ’ ve managed to go rounds everywhere we ’ ve been . We ’ re doing better than all but just a couple people . We ’ re not that screwed up .
At the same time , it seems like the competition level in Top Fuel has taken a big jump up this year . What have you seen from the rest of the Top Fuel field this year ? I disagree with that statement . You race 20 or 24 weeks a year , the competition is always there . Nobody has really gotten any better , we just haven ’ t been as dominant and we ’ ve allowed some of these guys to go more rounds or win races against us that had we been as dominant as we were in the past , it would be a whole different landscape .
The competitiveness of the field has been there for quite some time . There ’ s nobody new . Justin Ashley ’ s rookie year was 2020 . Brittany [ Force ] is not new . Antron ’ s not new . These guys may have a new team , but there ’ s no new people or competition . Other than Brittany just stepping up , nobody else has really just come in and dominated . It ’ s just some of these guys are capitalizing on some of the mistakes we ’ ve made , some of the mistakes that others have made , but nobody has really clearly taken and walked away with it .
Your team is known for solid team morale and minimal turnover . Has this season challenged that morale , or have they stayed the course knowing that next win was coming ? Everybody has stayed the course . This group of guys is as good a group of guys as you can put together . The continuity and the team that we ’ ve been able to field and establish and really solidify has been together since 2013 . This year , we had two new guys come on because we had two guys that simply wanted to quit racing and stay at home .
Not only us , but multiple , if not every team out there , has seen some type of effect from COVID . I think COVID really changed the dynamic that some of these guys thought of drag racing in and just said , “ Hey , I can spend more time at home and enjoy my family and sleep in my bed and do a lot more living other than 30 weeks a year on the road .” As a sport , we ’ ve lost a lot of crew guys because of whatever it may be . That ’ s my theory , but everybody ’ s having a hard time getting people to work .
TORRENCE ADMITS HE WASN ’ T
ALWAYS A FAN OF THE EARLY MORNING WAKE-UP CALLS TO WORK WITH HIS FATHER , BILLY , DURING THE SUMMER WHEN HE WAS GROWING UP , BUT NOW HE APPRECIATES THE WORK ETHIC THE ELDER TORRENCE
INSTILLED IN HIM .
102 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated . com Issue 178