No one has defeated Steve Torrence yet in this year’s Countdown to the Championship.

And Torrence won’t let off the gas until he claims that Top Fuel crown.

Why would he? After all, he said Sunday upon winning the NHRA AAA Texas FallNationals that he pulls to the starting line these days “knowing that you can slap the biggest guy in the bar and come out unscathed.”

Torrence took one huge step closer to his goal Sunday, defeating fellow independent racer Terry McMillen to earn his first triumph as a professional at the Texas Motorplex, south of Dallas, at Ennis.

More important for the native of nearby Kilgore, Texas, is that he extended his lead over closest challenger Clay Millican to 103 points after this third of six playoff events. If No. 2 Millican or No. 3 Tony Schumacher has any chance to derail Torrence, he needs to start making huge gains at the Carolina Nationals two weeks from now at Concord, N.C.’s zMAX Dragway.

After Torrence registered a winning 3.786-second elapsed time at 325.92 mph on the 1,000-foot course that clipped McMillen (3.826, 321.04) by .0193 of a second, or about nine feet, he saw something that melted his heart.

“I leaned in the car at the end and saw [McMillen’s five-year-old son] Cameron in there, crying, and that broke my heart,” Torrence said. “I almost wanted to give him the trophy. I said, ‘It’s OK. Your dad did an absolutely good job, and sometimes it just goes that way.’ I’m proud of Terry. And that little guy there, I hated to see him crying.”

For McMillen and his Amalie Oil Dragster, this season has been feast or famine. In 21 races, he has scattered six semifinal-or-better finishes among 13 first-round losses. He advanced Sunday past Mike Salinas (the class rookie who had his career breakthrough party at Indianapolis as top qualifier in every session) and reigning champion Brittany Force. Then he took out No. 1 qualifier and points leader Torrence’s relentless pursuer Millican to reach his fifth final-round appearance of 2018.

It still was a revival for U.S. Nationals winner McMillen after a disappointing Countdown start (first-round exits at Reading, Pa., and Madison, Ill.).

Torrence said he told McMillen that “the best thing about all of this is there were two independent cars in the final. There’s been two independent cars in the last final [Torrence and Millican]. These big, multi-car teams aren’t the powerhouses they once were. So it gives hope to other people. Some people don’t like the track prep. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other. But I think it has leveled the playing field quite a bit.”  

All the camaraderie aside, Torrence is on a mission and has the intense mindset that he will not allow anyone to get in his way. Although he loves Clay Millican personally, he said, “If we run into him on race day, we’re going to chop his head off.” Said Torrence, “It’s intense. It takes extreme focus. It takes staying in a specific mindset.”

By advancing past the semifinal round Sunday, Torrence banished the ghost of last October. A year ago at this race, when he was whipping the competition and was poised to grab his first Top Fuel championship, the Capco Dragster he so loved and proclaimed the best he ever had had violently hurled him into one guardwall then another at the end of a second-round victory. The car was trashed, and his title chances also suffered a bigger dent than he had imagined. Torrence was unhurt physically, but the accident took a toll on him as the back-up car couldn’t deliver. And he has carried those haunting memories for 357 days. Make that 355 days.

He said he stopped worrying about how that memory would affect him after the first qualifying session here Friday.

“Everybody built it up: ‘Oh, you’re coming back from the wreck and this and that.’ That was the problem on Q1,” Torrence said. “But after that, that was all out the window. We were here just to go rounds.”

The model privateer had to run three other independent teams en route to his eight victory this season. Torrence ran away from Bill Litton, whose engine let go early in Round 1. He handily dismissed Blake Alexander, whom he beat last year here before his fateful pass. Then he defeated Tony Schumacher, someone who had an 18-14 elimination advantage over him. And he had to face another strong independent racer in McMillen, a man just as desperate to keep his own dream season going.    

This was Torrence’s 11th start at the Texas Motorplex, where his record was a mediocre 10-10 before this weekend, but it was his third final-round appearance.

Crew chief Richard Hogan, who’s still recovering from a heart procedure at The Cleveland Clinic not quite two weeks ago, is an inspiration, Torrence said: “I can’t say enough about that guy. I put all of my faith in him in 2011, when we started this. I think a lot of teams out here had written him off. Well, sometimes you look at people for what they CAN be. And I think that he can be a champ.”

Hogan – and a whole bunch of drag-racing competitors and fans – think the same of Torrence.