Dom Lagana (near lane) dispatched Clay Millican in the first round.

Dom Lagana, brother of Torence’s car chief, Bobby Lagana Jr., drove his own TF dragster at E-town, but when he lost in the second round to Shawn Langdon, Dom and his crew moved to help Torrence’s team.

“Collectively, we sat there in the lounge,” Torrence recalled, referring to himself, tuning consultant Alan Johnson, crew chief Richard Hogan, and the Laganas. “The right lane had not been good all day, but we lost lane choice and got stuck over there in it. We saw Schumacher go .84 (3.843) in the semis and we knew the right lane was not going to hold an .84. We needed to go A to B and not beat ourselves and that’s what we did.

“We took a bunch of timing out of it and slowed the flows down,” he said of the planned de-tune. “It didn’t like it. It put holes out. But the bottom line is it wasn’t smokin’ the tires. I could hear (Schumacher’s car) when we left. I could tell he was right with us. I could hear him slap (the throttle, trying to overcome traction loss) and I knew he had to pedal it.”

Torrence ran 4.037 at 281.71 to Schumacher’s 4.234/268.28.

Torrence heads to Bristol, Tenn., in third place in the Top Fuel points behind Doug Kalitta and Antron Brown.