They’re Making Their Mark

Steffi Graf, Nancy Lopez, Katarina Witt and Janet Evans have won world renown as champions in their sports--by beating other women.

In drag racing--a far more macho endeavor than tennis, golf, skating or swimming--women such as Shelly Anderson, Cristen Powell and the legendary Shirley Muldowney had to defeat men to gain victory.

Ten women are entered this week in the 38th annual Chief Auto Parts Winternationals, opening event of the National Hot Rod Assn. season, at the Pomona Raceway. Qualifying starts Thursday.

Three of them, Anderson, Powell and Rhonda Hartman, will be in top fuel, drag racing’s top-of-the-line class. Those outrageous looking vehicles often exceed 300 mph in less than five seconds for a quarter-mile, and the acceleration provided by 5,500-horsepower engines is so intense that it takes two parachutes to slow them.

Only five women have won an NHRA top-fuel event, and two of them are Anderson and Powell. The others are Muldowney, Lori Johns and Lucille Lee. Hartman has won in the International Hot Rod Assn., an East Coast organization.

Where do the women come from who want to make a career out of such a dangerous occupation?

“We got into it just like most of the guys did, because our dad, or our brothers or our best friend was doing it,” says Anderson, a former cheerleader at Cal State Fullerton and Royal Oak High in Covina. Anderson is the quickest and fastest female driver in history, having run 317.46 mph in 4.617 seconds.

She won the Winternationals at Pomona in 1994.

Anderson’s father, Brad, is a former NHRA top alcohol champion, and her older brother, Randy, drives a funny car.

“I didn’t realize until I was probably in junior high that this wasn’t what every kid did on the weekend,” Anderson said. “I thought everyone went to the race track.

“Women have always been around drag racing because it’s always been a family sport. Only until Shirley [Muldowney] showed the way, the women were mostly in the background. I’m a driver, but my mother and my sister are just as much a part of our team.”

Her mother, Carol, handles the travel and computer technology, and her older sister, LeighAnn, manages the family business, Brad Anderson Enterprises, in Ontario.

“Mom has the hardest job,” Anderson said. “She’s like the go-between for all of us. If one of us is having a bad day, Mom knows it. If Randy or I are really mad at Dad, we go to Mom. She’s the one who has to smooth it over.”

Hartman, like Anderson, was also a cheerleader--at San Dimas High--and has also been around race cars for as long as she can remember.

“My father raced, my brother raced and I was always on the road with them,” she said. “I don’t know how young I was when I first started cleaning parts, polishing the car, stuff like that. My dad made sure I knew everything about the car, so when I was 16, I got my first license to drive an alcohol car.”

Hartman, 24, whose family now lives in Anderson, S.C., will be starting her first full NHRA season after racing for several years with the IHRA. She was rookie of the year in 1994 and last year won two national events. Her career bests are 4.718 seconds at 307.58 mph.

Powell, 18, was given a ticket to Frank Hawley’s School of Drag Racing by her father for her 16th birthday and two years later skipped her high school senior prom and won the national top-fuel event at Englishtown, N.J. She is the second-youngest top fuel winner in history.

“The kids [in high school] were really blown away by it when I got back to Portland,” Powell said. Her career-bests are 4.644 seconds at 307.27 mph.

“I owe what I’ve done to my dad,” she said. “When I was growing up, the door was always open to do basically, whatever I was inspired to do. But Dad taught me discipline and responsibility. Racing together gives us a chance to spend a lot of time together.”

The Hard Way

It wasn’t always so easy.

In the mid-1960s when Della Woods was one of the first women to try drag racing, the NHRA barred her, saying it was too dangerous for women.

When she finally got a license, Woods said, “It was like I was almost afraid to beat the men.”

Shirley Muldowney, who became a three-time world champion, hated her nickname “Cha Cha,” but used it to promote herself. It worked. When she won, papers headlined, “Cha Cha wins again.” It was much more impressive than “Muldowney wins again.” But once she won her first championship, Muldowney told everyone to put Cha Cha to rest.

Women racing today owe their acceptance to Muldowney, who fought her way through the ranks and broke down the attitudes toward women driving--and winning.

“I’m a racer because of Shirley,” said Anderson. “She was successful, she was the pioneer, she showed the way, showed the world how women could win against men. She’s the one who made corporations realize girls can do this too. I don’t think I would be where I am today if not for her impact on the sport.”

Anderson, 32, the highest-profile woman racing today, says she is constantly approached by young people, boys as well as girls, wanting to know how to get into drag racing, what it’s like, and what she’s like.

“From the letters, sometimes, I get the impression the kids think I’m some kind of a freak person,” she said. “When I tell them I feel like any normal person, that I was a cheerleader, they don’t seem to understand.

“I don’t believe what I tell them is what they want to hear. I always impress on them the importance of finishing school. That’s what my parents did. I didn’t always think it was what I needed, but now I see the importance of it, and I appreciate what they did.”

Although all of her competition is male, except on the rare occasions when she races Powell or Hartman, Anderson says she doesn’t think about the male vs. female aspect.

“I like racing men, I get a kick out of it, but when I’m on the [starting] line, I never think of myself against Larry Dixon, for instance. I think of myself against the car in the next lane. It’s not just me, or just Larry, it’s one team against the other. It takes the crew chief, the mechanics, the owner, the sponsor, it takes them all to make a winning package.”

Anderson, who could take apart and rebuild an engine as well as anyone before she became a driver, is well respected among her peers. She’s also not afraid to pull a practical joke on the guys.

At last year’s Autolite Nationals at Sears Point Raceway, she was seen carefully removing individual toothpicks from their cellophane wrappers, dipping them in hot pepper sauce and rewrapping them. Associated Press writer Anne Peterson asked her what she was doing.

“Do you know John Force’s crew chief, Austin Coil?” she asked. “He has a good-luck deal where he has to have a toothpick to chew on every day before he goes to the line.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl at the thought.

The Others

Melanie Troxel, of Littleton, Colo., is entered in an alcohol dragster, hoping to move up to top fuel in the next couple of years. She remembers her first drag races:

“When I was really young, I remember getting up at all hours of the morning, sleeping in the back of the Suburban on the way to a race track. Dad was racing before I was born and when I was 14 or 15, it occurred to me that I ought to be racing.”

Her father, Mike, won U.S. nationals in 1987 and the NHRA top-alcohol dragster championship in 1988. Melanie drove her first alcohol dragster last year and this week will be driving for Jerry Darrien while her family-owned car is being completed.

“For the first couple of years I was racing, I decided when I got to be 25, I would either quit and finish college or forget about college and go racing professionally,” she said. “I just turned 25, and right now, it’s racing. I can’t see myself doing anything else but racing. It’s still a family project. My dad is my crew chief.”

Troxel, who got a license at 18, says her friends in high school were oblivious to her career.

“I think they thought I was weird because I was never around on weekends, but it didn’t bother me because the majority of my friends came from the racetrack,” she said. “It was funny; one day in high school, someone found an article about me in National Dragster and posted it on the bulletin board. You can’t believe how many people were surprised. Most of them didn’t have a clue that racing was something I did.”

The six other women at Pomona will be in sportsman classes.

Mary Ann Method, 48, of Kennewick, Wash., is the oldest of the group and Amanda Gillis, 18, of Chino Hills, is the youngest.

Method is a two-time national event winner who competes in stock eliminator with her husband, Cal. The first race she entered was at Pomona in the mid-’70s.

“My husband was racing before we met,” she said. “We’d been married six years and I was going to all the races with him when a driver who was supposed to race with him didn’t show up. It was the ’75 or ’76 Winternationals, I can’t remember which.

“I just took over the entry. I went out to Irwindale to learn how to drive, and raced the next weekend. You couldn’t do something like that now, but it was OK back then.

“I went four rounds, one more than my husband. It was just dumb luck. I hadn’t learned yet how many ways there are to lose. All I was worried about was cutting a light and getting to the other end.”

The Methods will be in ’70 Chevy Novas this week.

“I don’t know if it’s the genes or living around race cars, but our daughter is talking about going bracket racing,” she said.

Gillis, beginning her third season in racing, drives a big-block, Chevrolet-powered super comp dragster.

The other entries are Kristine Johnson, 45, of Eatonville, Wash.; Kerri Angeles, 23, of Fountain Valley; Julie Horton Jordan, 40, of Modesto, and Martha Thompson, 34, of Temecula. All are in the stock eliminator class, drag racing’s entry level.

Johnson, who began racing in 1991, won the Winternationals stock eliminator title in 1996. She will drive a ’78 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Jordan, a CPA, was runner-up to Johnson, and will be in a ’79 Plymouth Volare.