Motor Sports Weekly News

By: Drew Hierwarter

There’s nothing new about women driving race cars. They’ve been doing it for years. But none received much notoriety until the sixties when Paula Murphy and Shirley Shahan made national headlines in NHRA drag racing. In the seventies Janet Guthrie was the first woman to race in the Indianapolis 500. Guthrie also had a brief but mostly unsuccessful career in NASCAR’s top series. Probably the most successful woman racer to date is Shirley Muldowney. Shirley was the first woman to drive, and win in a Top Fuel dragster in NHRA competition and she went on to win three world championships in that division. That was also a first for a woman. Since then several more women have been successful in NHRA competition. Angelle Sampey has won multiple championships riding a Pro Stock motorcycle, and six women (including Muldowney) have won in Top Fuel Competition. But now, in 2008, it seems that woman are really coming into their own and making headlines.  

Earlier in the year, Danica Patrick made history becoming the first woman to win an Indy Car race. Chrissy Wallace, the daughter of NASCAR racer Mike Wallace made history by winning several main events at Hickory Motor Speedway, one of the toughest short tracks in the country and a place that has been the breeding ground for more NASCAR stars than any other track in the country. A few weeks ago in Atlanta, Ashley Force became the first woman in history to win in an NHRA Funny Car and she had to beat her dad, John Force to do it. Two weeks ago in Bristol, Tennessee, Melanie Troxel won for her first time in a Funny Car becoming the first woman in the NHRA to have won a national event in both Funny Car and Top Fuel. And now we can add yet another name to the list of women who have won at the top level of their sport. 

Hillary Will beat Larry Dixon to win the NHRA Top Fuel title at the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas. This was only Will’s second final round appearance in three years of trying and she combined a tough .038 reaction time with a 4.744 elapsed time to defeat number one qualifier, Dixon. Indeed, she never ran worse than 4.80 all day and had to beat no less than Doug Herbert, Morgan Lucas, and Cory McClenathan before facing Dixon.  

“I’m thankful for all the women drivers who’ve paved the way and shown that women can drive a race car and drive a race car well,” said Will. “I’m proud of Melanie [Troxel], and I’m proud of Ashley [Force], and I’m proud of other women in motorsports. Honestly, we just want to be racers. . . There’s so many emotions for me right now because there were times when I thought, ‘I can’t do this. Maybe I shouldn’t be racing. Maybe I don’t belong in this fuel car,’ but this is what I love to do, and through everything, you can just never, never, never give up. My team never gave up on me. I still have a lot of the guys working on the team that I did when we started, and they never gave up on me. Our team owner, Ken Black, has been nothing but supportive. I’m thankful that everybody just stood by me.” 

Over on the Funny Car side, John Force picked up his 126^th national event win and the first after his devastating crash in Dallas last year. In victory lane, an emotional John Force just kept repeating, “I did it, I did it, I did it.” 

“At the end of the day, winning’s what it’s all about.” Force said, “Every driver says that, but when you’ve won like me, you get to take it for granted, but then I got slapped, and I don’t take it for granted anymore. To go all these rounds was a great feeling for me. I didn’t want to go winless, not after that wreck.” 

Ron Krisher won the Pro Stock title driving his Valvoline sponsored Chevrolet Cobalt. He used a 6.758 to beat a slowing Larry Morgan in the final.

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All of NASCAR’s top three divisions where in Dover, Delaware over the weekend and the track nicknamed the “Monster Mile” provided plenty of action. Kyle Busch, as he has been for most of 2008, was the hottest driver on the weekend and, were it not for a transmission problem in the truck race and a crash in the Nationwide race, just might have swept the weekend.  As it was Busch drove what he himself admitted was a third place car at best to his fourth win of the season in Sunday’s Sprint Cup feature. He did it using good pit stops to gain track position near the end and then stretching that out to a three second lead over second place runner Carl Edwards. Busch and Edwards were followed by Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, and Martin Truex, Jr. as the only other cars finishing on the lead lap.  

Denny Hamlin was victorious in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race, and rookie Scott Speed won the Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday in only his sixth start. 

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The Indy Cars made their traditional, week after the Indy 500 stop at the historic Milwaukee Mile on Sunday. Ryan Brisco, driving for Penske Racing, entered victory lane for the first time in his career. Ironically, it was thirty years to the day since Rick Mears won his first Indy Car race, also at Milwaukee, and also in a Roger Penske owned car. “It feels so good to win and it feels so good to do it here in Milwaukee,” Brisco said. This was his 25^th start in the series.