When Steve Torrence formed his family-centric Capco Contractors Top Fuel team, his aim was to become a dominant force in the NHRA’s headliner class like Tony Schumacher was for the drag-racing empire his father built. He wanted “them Capco Boys” to be the badass, fearsome force Schumacher’s U.S. Army supporters were.

When Tony Schumacher sat on the sidelines without funding after the 19-year Army partnership vanished, Steve Torrence was the first one to lament Schumacher’s absence. He said he wished eight-time series champion Schumacher were out there racing with him and the rest of the dragster drivers. He said he wanted to race the best – and beat the best.

With Torrence trying to wrap up his third consecutive Top Fuel championship (which would tie him with Schumacher and Joe Amato as the only ones in the category to achieve that), Sunday’s final round of the Mopar Express Lane SpringNationals at Houston Raceway Park was – for Torrence – an inopportune time to have his wishes come true.

Schumacher is back on the track, even if for maybe just one more race or two in the Okuma / Sandvik Coromant Dragster for a total of only seven appearances in the abbreviated 11-race season. And he jogged Torrence’s memory about who commanded the class before Torrence went on his tear for the past four years.

 Schumacher answered the question “Who can stop Steve Torrence?” with his narrow victory on the 1,000-foot course at Baytown, Texas, that was a side-by-side display of 3.6-second, 330-mph power between the top two qualifiers.

New Texan Schumacher used a 3.669-second elapsed time at 330.63 mph (fastest of the meet) to edge native Texan Torrence’s 3.687 (at 330.07). Following Tommy Johnson’s Funny Car victory, Schumacher gave Don Schumacher Racing the double-up triumph by .0028 seconds, or about 16 inches, about the width of the spill plate on his front wing.

For Torrence, that was his sixth 3.6-second E.T. of the weekend.

The result happened to tip the balance of their head-to-head-races in Schumacher’s favor, to 19-18, although Torrence still has a 6-2 advantage in final rounds.

When Schumacher returned in July in the Global Electronic Technology entry, he wasn’t really a factor in eliminations. His grand re-entry into competition, fairly or unfairly, seemed anticlimactic. But he teamed with surprisingly available familiar crew chief Mike Green, and they have made significant strides since the U.S. Nationals in the Okuma / Sandvik Coromant Dragster. At St. Louis, Schumacher was top qualifier and semifinalist, and he has vaulted from out of competition entirely to top-10 status in this non-Countdown season.

Torrence, of Kilgore, Texas, extended his lead over No. 2-ranked Doug Kalitta this weekend from 51 points to 61 then to 101 as the tour heads to the season finale this coming week at Las Vegas with a points-and-a-half twist tossed into the drama. Schumacher, who lives at Lakeway, Texas, near Austin, is ninth in the standings.

Schumacher, the No. 2 qualifier whom Torrence aced out Saturday by .013 of a second for the No. 1 start and first-round bye privilege, won for the first time since the June 2018 race at Bristol, Tenn. It was his 85th overall.

“I’ve missed the guys and I’ve missed the people. We’ve only had a handful of races back as a team, and they’re doing a great job for Sandvik, Okuma and Toyota,” Schumacher said of his crew. “And Camping World, thank you for stepping up. It feels unbelievable.

“This is our home track. My fiancé [Summer Penland] and her family are from here, and they’re all here today. Half of my neighbors in Austin have come out today and have never been here before. They just saw two of the best semifinal and final rounds you’re ever going to see. That’s what it’s about. It’s about the people who showed up here in the stands, the people who worked so hard on this car. We just love the opportunity.

“Both the semis and the finals were outstanding races,” he said, including his victory against Billy Torrence to send him to his first final since the November 2018 Finals at Pomona, Calif. (in which – you guessed it – Torrence beat him). “That’s about as rewarding of a day as anybody can have.”

Simply coming back from a 26-race layoff is cause enough for a racer perhaps to be rusty. But Schumacher explained what makes Sunday’s victory at Houston (his third here after successes in 2005 and 2009) was particularly remarkable.

“We’ve been through three race cars in six races,” he said.” We qualified excellent, then lost our car after Leah broke one. We had to take a new car out, and that’s just the second race on it. That car hasn’t made two dozen runs down a racetrack, and Mike Green and this Okuma/Sandvik Coromant Toyota team just went out and figured out how to win a race with it. Unbelievable.

“We’ve got one more race in Vegas, and I’m looking forward to that. It’s one of my favorite tracks. I really want to win Vegas,” Schumacher said, “because you get the whole off-season to think about it.”

Although Schumacher denied Torrence his first victory at Houston Raceway Park and relegated him to runner-up for the third time in seven visits, Torrence wasn’t upset.

He said, “That was a hell of a drag race. To be honest, we did exactly what we wanted. In hindsight, I don’t think we’d change anything. They took a shot and made it work. That’s why they won all those championships. The bottom line is we know we’re taking a great car to Vegas.”

Kalitta still has a mathematical chance to interrupt Torrence’s march into the history books. The maximum number of points available in the finale, including all bonuses, is 183, while a first-round loser will earn at least 46 points. Round victories will produce 30 points.

His team’s take on that is that the task is “serious but not insurmountable.”

Kalitta lost to Antron Brown in Sunday’s second round. And he said, “We knew the championship would come down to the last race. We have a hole to dig out of, for sure. The one thing about this Mac Tools team is we are going to keep fighting. There are points and half in Las Vegas, and if we get a couple quick qualifying runs, we can make up some ground on Saturday. We are going to go into the weekend with our focus on winning the race and getting the championship.

“We didn’t make up ground this weekend, which is disappointing,” he said. “There is one race left, and we just want a chance to get that championship. We have that opportunity, and the Mac Tools team just has to capitalize on it.”  

Torrence has to make sure not to stumble in qualifying or in eliminations. Otherwise, he doesn’t have to do a whole lot different this coming weekend at Las Vegas to record his third straight championship. So it’ll be his turn to take a shot and see if it works.

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