Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona could change face of series

Billy Torrence, a part-time driver in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series, is fourth in the Top Fuel class standings heading into the final weekend.

Whether Doug Kalitta will break his Top Fuel championship jinx and make the Steve Torrence–Brittany Force on-track feud a moot point is spicy enough reason to follow this weekend’s Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona.

Top Fuel’s Billy Torrence, who started 10th and has gobbled up two of the five completed Countdown events to vault to No. 4 in the standings, might choke his son’s chances for a second consecutive championship.   

But the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series has a whole smorgasbord of enticing fare. Funny Car fans alone have enough on the menu to stuff themselves. Robert Hight has led the standings for all but one week of the season – following the Reading, Pennsylvania, Countdown to the Championship kickoff. But he has to fend off a handful of other champions, namely Jack Beckman, Matt Hagan and John Force—and they’re within 72 points of each other.

John Force is seeking his 17th NHRA Funny Car championship.

Bob Tasca, who broke the sound barrier during an F-15 fly-along with United States Air Force General Robert G. Novotny, wing commander at Nellis Air Force Base, is in fifth place and is hungry for his first Funny Car championship.

Erica Enders has a strong command in the Pro Stock title hunt, adding zest to the possibility that the NHRA could crown more than one female champion. The sanctioning body already has a female champion, Top Alcohol Dragster’s Megan Meyer. If pro-level Enders can claim her third championship in six seasons, that would be a historic achievement. If Brittany Force can overtake Steve Torrence—and she trails him by just 16 points—that would make sport history. Never before have two female pro racers earned series titles in the same year.

Already the NHRA has extended its streak of crowning female champions to six years. Enders scored back-to-back championships in Pro Stock in 2014-2015. Mia Tedesco was the Super Gas champ in 2016. Brittany Force followed with her 2017 achievement in Top Fuel, and Leah Pritchett aced the Factory Stock Showdown class in 2018.

But for all the appetizing storylines on the table at this season finale, what happens at Pomona might have a significant effect on the future of the NHRA.

If John Force can devour the maximum qualifying bonus points and parlay the system of points and a half for this race into a 17th Funny Car championship, he’ll fuel talk again about his potential retirement.

Given that he has wrung his hands before about whether he should stop driving (most notably in September after winning the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis for his record-extending 151 victory), he could be prone to repeat. Force has said he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Then again, he has shared how conflicted he is about continuing to do what he loves and what he does best. He’s 70 years old, which, frankly, isn’t an overriding factor in drag racing. Like gender and race, age is not a defining trait in the drag-racing community.

Seventeenth title or not, Force most likely will stay put. But it would be another reminder to the NHRA that it cannot rely so heavily on Force’s winning statistics or his winning personality to promote and advance the sport.

And the performance of Billy Torrence already has started a bit of a shift in strategy among racers. How much more of an impact will his 2019 story have if it ends with a championship for the part-time racer? Or, as his son, reigning champion and points leader Steve Torrence, said at the outset of the Countdown, “How’s it going to look if my dad goes out and wins the championship and he raced 16 of the 24 races?”

The elder Torrence traditionally races now and again because he has to tend to business at home near Kilgore, Texas. “Somebody’s got to run the company,” he said. So he wound up winning the second event of the year, at Phoenix, and won again in the summer, at Sonoma, Calif. In his 10 regular-season appearances (out of a possible 18), Billy Torrence won twice and was runner-up twice. And he bumped Terry McMillen from the Countdown field to become the No. 10 seed.

So he proved that a racer, if prepared with parts and personnel, doesn’t have to compete at every event to become title-eligible. That’s not what he set out to prove. Many times he has deferred to his wife, Kay, who owns and manages the Capco/Torrence Racing team, and said, “I’m here by invitation only.” Of course, the better he fared, the more often he was invited – and often that was to help his son’s efforts. For instance, when Steve Torrence bowed out early at Dallas, his wife told him, “You always said you wanted to help Steve. Well, now’s your chance.”

So Billy Torrence never tried to be a trendsetter or trailblazer, and he never planned to pursue personal glory. But he lived by his creed to give his best at the task at hand, and that led him nevertheless to his game-changer role. With escalating costs and even the most successful Top Fuel racer—eight-time champion and 84-time winner Tony Schumacher—sidelined because of inadequate funding, Torrence’s feat has been inspiring. It has eased, at least somewhat, the burden of seeking sponsorship. No longer does someone feel the pressure of gathering $2-3 million to field a competitive team.

Furthermore, it gives some impetus to a discussion about shortening the season to perhaps 18 races. That’s what the Pro Stock class has learned to enjoy. The Pro Stock Motorcycle class always has had a shorter schedule than the nitro-powered categories.

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