NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

After becoming NHRA’s first female Professional class national event winner with her breakthrough triumph in Top Fuel in 1976, Shirley Muldowney wasted no time claiming the next accomplishment the following year: Top Fuel world champion.

Muldowney won the 1977 Top Fuel crown in a runaway after three straight summertime wins in Columbus, Englishtown, and Montreal. Her points total was more than 16 round-wins ahead of championship runner-up Pat Dakin.

When Muldowney won the 1977 NHRA Winston Top Fuel championship, her accomplishment was so outstanding that the U.S. House of Representatives bestowed upon her an Outstanding Achievement Award, and she was named Person of the Year on the Car Craft Magazine All-star Drag Racing Team.

She would go on to add championships in 1980 — becoming the first driver of either gender (in the points-counting era, 1974 to present) — and again in 1982, when she became the first Top Fuel racer to win three world championships regardless of scoring format.

Almost any list that discusses women in motorsports inevitably begins with Muldowney, and it’s not just because she was the first woman to license in Top Fuel, the first to win a race in a fuel dragster, and the first to win a world championship, but it's also because her accomplishments and the battles she fought against a well-established male hierarchy helped open the doors for others.

In the 1960s and '70s, Don Garlits, Muldowney’s longtime foil, was old-school popular. He built, tuned, and drove the cars, and to him, utilitarian mattered most of all. He was a drag racer's drag racer, yet part of a dying breed as the 1980s roared into view. Muldowney represented the newer breed. Although she knew her way around the wrenches, her job was to drive and to attract fans and sponsors, whose addition to the team was becoming almost as important as horsepower.

And, boy, could she drive. Fearless on the track and feared at the starting line, she racked up 18 career wins in just 186 NHRA national events, 179 of which came in Top Fuel. Her battles with Garlits were legendary wars, whether it was on the national event stage or at some far-flung track where their appearance drew overflow crowds.

Muldowney’s successes on the track drew her legions of fans, and the headlines she made in the motorsports world helped drive NHRA Drag Racing into the mainstream.

See the complete to-date list of moments on the Top 75 Moments homepage