Steve Torrence showed up at preseason testing at Phoenix and this weekend at Pomona with longer hair, and he said not to read anything into that.

“We’ve been so busy that I just haven’t had a chance to get a haircut. No, really, that’s all it is. We’ve been bidding jobs six days a week,” the Capco Contractors Dragster driver said, referring to the Kilgore, Texas-based family pipeline construction and maintenance business.  “It looks like it’s going to be one of those fly-in-on-Thursday, fly-out-on-Sunday seasons, but that’s good. That means we’re laying pipe.”

Torrence also is sporting a handlebar mustache and bit of a scowl that make him look like gunslinger Wyatt Earp, and that probably is fitting. That probably is something symbolic. An avid hunter who knows how to handle firearms, Torrence is loaded for another Shootout at the NHRA Corral. He finished 81 points short of the championship at this venue three months ago, and finishing second in the final Top Fuel standings was about as acceptable to him as finishing second in a gun duel.

So he’s beginning his “justice tour” in a Morgan Lucas Racing-built dragster that’s a replica of the one in which he won a category-best eight races last season. It’s also just like the one which crashed at the Texas Motorplex last October and triggered a disappointing spiral through the final two 2017 events. His posse – with Richard Hogan and Bobby Lagana sharing tuning decisions – happens to the same again this year.

“We only know one way to race,” Torrence, who’s aiming for a second Winternationals victory in three years, said. “We’re still just going to go out and try to win every round. It’s not possible, I know, but that’s still how we’re going to go at it.”  

He said, "We had a really good car last year, but there’s no doubt we struggled after the wreck in Dallas. We were able to spend the off-season massaging all the parts and pieces and going over everything with a fine-tooth comb, just trying to get back to where we were. We were trying a few things at testing but nothing that would deviate very much from our tune-up. A couple of shutoff runs (in testing) probably would have been mid-60s, so we feel like we’re right where we ought be.”

After Friday’s season-opening session, Torrence was qualified  . . . ahem . . . No. 2, with a 3.726-second elapsed time at 326.40 mph.