Steve Torrence popped up from the cockpit of his bright red Capco Contractors Dragster, and he was seeing red Sunday afternoon.

He slid to the ground and marched straight for the timing tent at the top end of the Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis dragstrip, determined to see his time slip and figure out why he lost the Top Fuel class’ final round of the Dodge NHRA Indy Nationals, this showdown between the Nos. 1 and 2 qualifiers.

But Torrence didn’t lose the race.

Instead, he took advantage of opponent Terry McMillen’s bobble at the starting line and won on a holeshot to claim his 38th overall victory and third on this fabled racetrack in 18 starts here (including five Traxxas Shootout bonus races).

Torrence clearly got the jump on the Christmas Tree with his 0.054-second reaction time against McMillen’s snoozy 0.234. But he smoked the tires on his normally domineering dragster as he bore down on the finish line. Meanwhile, McMillen was barreling down the right lane in his Amalie Oil Dragster, trying to make up for his late launch. And in one of the more outstanding side-by-side contests of the day, Torrence evidently thought McMillen ran him down. But Torrence atoned for his own mistake.

“I was dead late on the light,” McMillen said, “and we were going down there and he [Torrence] was pedaling it. He quit running – I could hear it. We had momentum, and at that point we were coming on pretty fast. We both got to the finish – I thought we won, he thought he lost, but it didn’t work out that way. It was just close down there. I haven’t seen a replay, but neither of us knew who won.”

Once Torrence realized he had triumphed with his 4.273-second, 224.17-mph performance – against McMillen’s quicker and faster 4.153-second elapsed time and 240.59-mph speed – he delivered a short speech that was a curiously blend of explanation, annoyance, and gratitude. He expressed irritation with his own driving and with the face mask he is required to wear in public as he tried to explain his initial confusion.

“It’s frustrating. I ain’t the best at pedaling one of these things, but I try to do my job. We go out there, and it knocked the tire off. And it kind of surprised me. I did the best we could do,” he said, perturbed by the mask (“I’m about to suffocate in this deal’).

But he calmed down once he had another Wally in his hands and said, “All the guys at Capco, thank you guys for supporting us. I got my head out of my butt. We’re heading home with another Wally.

“It’s a blessing to be able to come back out here and to get to do what we enjoy doing. We love to race. Everybody does. Maybe our country will overcome these obstacles and we’ll get back to normal real soon,” Torrence said. “We’re thankful, and we’re headed back to Texas.”

When he gets home to Kilgore in East Texas, the two-time and reigning Top Fuel king will absorb it all. He’ll appreciate that he ran his eliminations record here to 22-11 and joined other winners Ron Capps (Funny Car), Jeg Coughlin (Pro Stock), and Angelle Sampey (Pro Stock Motorcycle) at this third consecutive race at Indianapolis. It will hit him that he has been to eight final rounds at Indianapolis (including the U.S. Nationals in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2017 and the Traxxas Shootout in 2012, 2013 and 2017).

Meanwhile, McMillen blamed himself for missing out on his third victory and his second at Indianapolis. But as he understood the strides he had made in earning the first No. 1 qualifying success, he began to value his progress.

“I just flat lost concentration on the starting line, and it cost us,” he said. “That final round I was the weak link. The round before that I was the one that saved it. It is a give-and-take team effort. Ultimately, the biggest positive out of today is we have a wicked good car and the driver just screwed up in the final round in the place you should never screw up. There is no one to blame but me.”

McMillen said, “This race car is just stout. Ever since we brought it out, it has been good. We have been taking it to the shop and reworking a couple things on it and making it better. Every time it goes down the track, we learn something new. You can’t complain. It is a great car. The driver just cost us.

“You have to take away that we have a great race car. We have a good team behind that car led by Rob Wendland,” he said.  

“This is the third weekend of the car being out. We built this car in-house,” McMillen said. “We took some of last year’s technology that we learned and took that and incorporated it into some new [features] and the car has responded. The car has done an amazing job going down the track, leaving well, 60-foot well. We continue to modify things, because we have another car three-quarters on the jjg, a fresh car, and after we are done making all these changes, I think the car is invincible. It is amazing what it can do. So you take that and couple it with the team that we have [and] the combination could be deadly.”

Being the top qualifier played no part in his starting line error, McMillen said: “Honestly, I tried to block that out. I didn’t want that on my mind, because you start thinking about that and you get yourself in trouble. I just ran it like a normal race day. I didn’t care who was in the other lane. We just looked at every situation and ran our race. Whether we won or lost, we were going to run on our terms. The No. 1 spot other than the prestige and finally checking that off our bucket list there was no distraction on race day.”

He said he and his crew “are immensely motivated” as they start concentrating on the U.S. Nationals, which he won in 2018 for his second career victory.   

“We had a good car two weeks ago and lost in the semifinals because we put a different blower on it.  It was down on blower boost. You look at our team and we are just going rounds and it was the quickest car two weeks ago. It was the No. 1 qualifier at Indy3. That is a statement. On race day, it wasn’t necessarily the quickest car, but it was probably the most consistent car,” McMillen, of Elkhart, Ind., said.

Torrence said, “Anytime you’re at Indy, it’s special.”

And Sunday, it indeed was special for both Torrence and McMillen, for different reasons. Torrence took home the trophy to prove it, but in a sense, both were winners.