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Top Fuel has had more female competitors than any other NHRA Pro class, and Ida Zetterström’s Top Fuel debut last weekend at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd made her the 24th woman to compete in drag racing’s quickest class. Here’s a quick look at the two dozen women who have suited up and competed in Top Fuel at an NHRA national event.

SHIRLEY MULDOWNEY

Because almost any list that discusses women in motorsports inevitably begins with Shirley Muldowney, here we are. 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.

Muldowney competed in 186 NHRA national events, 179 of which came in Top Fuel, beginning at the 1974 NHRA Winternationals, After a pair of DNQs, the former Funny Car racer qualified for the first time at the 1974 Springnationals. Exactly one year (and three races) later, she scored her first round-win over Rick Ramsey at the 1975 Springnationals en route to her first career final-round appearance. She lost that final to Marvin Graham and a few months later incredibly also reached the final round of the sport’s biggest event, the NHRA U.S. Nationals, where she was runner-up to Don Garlits.

She scored her first of 18 career national event wins at the 1976 Springnationals in just her sixth career start, besting Bob Edwards in the final round. At the same event, Muldowney was also the first woman to qualify No. 1 in a Pro category with a performance of 6.031 seconds.

Muldowney won her first world championship in 1977 and became the first driver of either gender (in the points-counting era, 1974 to present) to repeat as Top Fuel champion when she won it again in 1980, followed by a third title in 1982.

Muldowney is the only female driver to win Top Fuel at the U.S. Nationals and the first woman to clock a five-second run (1975 U.S. Nationals) and four-second run (1989 NHRA Keystone Nationals). Her pass of 253.52 mph during a May 1977 Division 7 WCS meet at Orange County International Raceway in Irvine, Calif., made her just the second member of the NHRA 250-mph Club, behind only Garlits.

She was the only female driver to make NHRA’s prestigious list of Top 50 Drivers as part of its 50th-anniversary celebration in 2001, where she was ranked No. 5.

Twenty-one years after her 2003 retirement, she still ranks 12th among all Top Fuel winners, first among females in the class, and third overall behind Erica Enders and Angelle Sampey.

So, yeah, you can see why she’s at the top of the list.

BRITTANY FORCE

The daughter of 16-time Funny Car world champ John Force is the only woman other than Muldowney to win a Top Fuel championship, and she’s won two, in 2017 and 2022. Only 13 drivers in Top Fuel history have won more than one championship.

Brittany Force’s 16 career wins rank her second all-time in female Top Fuel victories behind only Muldowney, and she is almost certain to eclipse Muldowney’s total in the next several seasons.

Force has 37 final-round appearances and 47 No. 1 qualifying efforts in 245 career starts beginning at the 2013 NHRA Winternationals. She won her first round in her fifth start, at the 2013 NHRA Southern Nationals, where she beat Doug Kalitta, and her first national event crown at the 2016 NHRA Gatornationals in her 27th start, beating Terry McMillen for the title.

She made the quickest pass in nitro-racing history, 3.623, at the 2019 Reading event, and the fastest speed in Top Fuel history, 338.94 mph, at the 2022 NHRA Finals in Pomona.

LEAH PRUETT

With 12 career Top Fuel wins, Leah Pruett ranks third among female Top Fuel winners, and with six combined wins in Pro Mod and Factory Stock, her 18 wins tie her with Muldowney for overall victories.

Pruett, a former series champion in the Nostalgia Funny Car ranks of the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Racing Series, scored her first Top Fuel victory at the 2016 Phoenix event, where she defeated Brittany Force in what was just the second all-female Top Fuel final in history. Crazily enough, Pruett and Force faced each other again a year later in Phoenix in 2017 with Pruett also taking the win. Pruett also qualified No. 1 at both events. She has 15 career No. 1 starts.

Pruett came one round-win away from becoming the sport’s third female Top Fuel champion, losing a tight race against Doug Kalitta on the final run of the 2023 season. She ultimately finished third. She is sitting out the 2024 season as she and her husband, motorsports Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, await the birth of their first child in November.

MELANIE TROXEL

The daughter of 1988 Top Alcohol Dragster world champion Mike Troxel proved to be incredibly successful in her own right, with victories in four different classes, the most among all female racers. 

In addition to her four career Top Fuel wins, Melanie Troxel also has wins in Top Alcohol Dragster (2), Funny Car (1), and Pro Modified (2). Her lone Funny Car win, at the 2008 NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, made her the first woman and just the 14th driver in history to win in both Top Fuel and Funny Car.

Troxel, who is currently inactive, holds the record for most consecutive final rounds by a Top Fuel driver of either gender to start a season in NHRA history, five, to kick off the 2006 season, which also included her first career Top Fuel win at the Winternationals.

LORI JOHNS

Lori Johns also accumulated four career wins in Top Fuel over seven seasons beginning in 1988, when she made her class debut at the NHRA NorthStar Nationals in Brainerd. She scored her first round-win in her fifth start, at the NHRA Finals that year, defeating Robert Reehl, and her first event win, at the 1990 Winternationals, in her 25th career start. She was just the third woman to win an NHRA national event crown.

Johns would win three times in 1990, scoring also in Atlanta and Memphis, Tenn., and added her fourth and final victory at the 1991 Memphis event. It’s worth noting that all four of her final-round wins came over world champions: Joe Amato (twice), Don Prudhomme, and Dick LaHaie. She scored one career No. 1 qualifying start, at the 1991 event in Denver, where her field-leading 4.99 pass was the first sub-five-second pass at the mile-high altitude.

SHELLY ANDERSON PAYNE

The daughter of three-time Top Alcohol Funny Car world champion Brad Anderson, Shelly Anderson Payne was a winner in both Top Fuel, where she collected four wins, and in Top Alcohol Dragster, where she had one victory, at the 1992 Atlanta race.

Anderson won her first Top Fuel Wally at the 1993 NHRA Keystone Nationals in Reading, defeating Mike Dunn for the crown, to become the sport’s fourth female Top Fuel winner. She also added wins at the 1994 Winternationals, where she deftly rode out a blown rear tire past the finish line, and the 1996 events in Richmond and Seattle. She also was the No. 1 qualifier at the 1994 NHRA Finals. She went on to race alongside husband Jay Payne in the Pro Mod class.

Their daughter, Madison, has already claimed a trio of national event wins in Top Alcohol Dragster and Super Comp, and son Toby claimed a runner-up in Super Comp.

LUCILLE LEE

Nearly six years after Muldowney’s breakthrough female Top Fuel win, Lucille Lee became the second woman to win in Top Fuel, taking home the trophy at the 1982 Atlanta event. 

It was a meteoric rise for the former executive secretary who told her boss at car-care products company TR3 Resin Glaze that she might like to drive a dragster after seeing the TR3-sponsored cars driven by Steve Hodkinson and Marvin Graham. She debuted in her Marc Danekas-tuned dragster at the 1981 U.S. Nationals and won her first round two events later, at the NHRA Finals, where she beat Frank Bradley.

She reached the semifinals at the 1982 season opener in Pomona then scored a major triumph in winning the famed March Meet, where she upset Muldowney in the final round. She won the Atlanta event in what was just her sixth start, taking a bye run after teammate Hodkinson was shut off in the final round.

Muldowney stopped Lee’s string of success in the semifinals of the next event, the NHRA Cajun Nationals, then again avenged her March Meet loss by beating Lee in the final of the 1982 Springnationals (above), which was the first all-female Top Fuel final. Later that year, Lee scored her first and only No. 1 qualifying berth, at the NHRA Mile-Hiigh Nationals. She retired from driving at the end of the season.

CRISTEN POWELL

Like many drivers on this list, Cristen Powell was a second-generation racer, following in the footsteps of her father, Casey, who competed in the Funny Car class in the early 1970s.

The former Top Alcohol Dragster racer won her first Top Fuel round in her first race, at the 1997 Winternationals, beating future three-time world champ Larry Dixon, and then went winless over the next fives races. The 18-year-old skipped her high school prom to attend the NHRA Summernationals, where she qualified just 15th but upset reigning Winston champion Kenny Bernstein in the opening round, then got past regular tour winner Cory McClenathan and points leader Gary Scelzi before beating fellow first-time finalist Bruce Sarver. Twenty-five years after Jeb Allen burst upon the national scene as the first 18-year-old to win an NHRA title at the 1972 Summernationals, Powell became the first 18-year-old female to do so and remains the second youngest winner in class history. She had one career No. 1 qualifier, at the 1998 event in Seattle.

She later went on to race in the Funny Car class but recorded no more victories.

HILLARY WILL

Like Powell, Hillary Will came from the Top Alcohol Dragster ranks to find success in the nitro-fueled class. Will, another second-generation racer, first tasted success in Las Vegas in 2005 in the Top Alcohol classes. Las Vegas businessman Ken Black, owner of the KB Racing Pro Stock team, was looking to expand into Top Fuel with a female driver, and noticed Will in an issue of National Dragster. He reached out to then-Kalitta Motorsports crew chief Jim Oberhofer, who endorsed and contacted Will for Black, who then inked her to a three-year deal.

Connie Kalitta added her to his Top Fuel stable in 2006 with backing from Black. The timing was fortunate for Will as the Kalitta team already had three Top Fuelrs in the stable — the late Scott Kalitta, Doug Kalitta, and David Grubnic — but Scott wanted to go back to his Funny Car roots, which he did, clearing a spot for Will.

Two years later, Will beat Larry Dixon in the final round of the 2008 Topeka event for her first and only career Pro win. The downturn in the housing market prevented Black from continuing to fund the operations, and she tried unsuccessfully to find new sponsors. She sat out the next three seasons before making a brief 2012 comeback with the Dote Racing team.

In 2013, she married three-time Pro Stock Motorcycle world champion Matt Hines. They live in the Indianapolis area, where she is a high school math teacher, and the two have a 7-year-old son, Brenden.

Fifteen other women have competed in NHRA Top Fuel action with varying degrees of success. They are presented below in alphabetical order.

VIVECA AVERSTEDT

Viveca Averstedt made the long trip from Jakobsbergs, Sweden, to the United States in the mid-1990s. Despite great success in Europe, Averstedt, nicknamed "The World’s Fastest Viking,” and husband/tuner Håkan failed to qualify at the four events they entered in their ex-Joe Amato dragster. To be fair, her final DNQ, at the 1998 Gatornationals, she was third alternate in what was then the quickest field in Top Fuel history. Today, the Averstedts run a successful food truck business, dubbed Swede Dish, in Florida and have been featured on television cooking shows.

KRISTA BALDWIN

While a number of drivers on this list are second-generation quarter-milers, only Kristen Baldwin can claim three generations of Top Fuel history as her pedigree. The granddaughter of Top Fuel legend Chris “the Greek” Karamesines and the daughter of late Top Fuel racer Bobby Baldwin, Krista made her Top Fuel debut at the 2021 Gatornationals after proving herself in the Top Alcohol Dragster class.

She raced sporadically over the next three seasons in a well-traveled 2007-vintage dragster previously campaigned by Grandpa. She became the team owner in 2022 and this year went all-in by purchasing Pat Dakin’s entire Top Fuel operation. In her first outing with the new car, she ran a career-best pass of 3.75 in Phoenix.

Baldwin also has proven herself to be a deft marketer and an invaluable resource to Funny Car team owner Paul Lee as the creative director for the multiple aftermarket companies he owns.

DANNIELLE DePORTER

Spunky 19-year-old Arizonan Dannielle DePorter won the 1992 NHRA Rookie of the Year award after a 10th-place finish at the wheel of the Paul Smith Drag Racing School dragster owned and tuned by experienced nitro hand Paul Smith and financed by her father, John.

The season was highlighted by a semifinal finish at that year’s NHRA World Finals that lifted them into the top 10 of points and helped secure votes as the year’s best rookie racer. DePorter is also the answer to the trivia question, "Who was in the other lane when Kenny Bernstein made the first 300-mph run at the 1992 Gatornationals?"

After an abbreviated two-race 1993 season (Atlanta and Englishtown), DePorter was on the sidelines after the team's funding ran dry, and Australian Rachelle Splatt took over driving the car in 1994, which by then was sponsored by the Luxor casino in Las Vegas and tuned by Frank Bradley. Splatt lasted just five races, and DePorter was back in the car in Memphis and ran four events, highlighted by the Englishtown race, where her Bob Brandt-tuned dragster set top speed and qualified an impressive No. 3, but the team was disbanded a few races later. 

After her NHRA career ended, DePorter did some IHRA racing and competed in Europe, where she suffered a crash in a Knut Soderquist-owned car in Hockenheim, Germany, at the Nitro Olympics in August 1999.

This year, DePorter and her late father, John, were inducted into the Arizona Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

VICKY FANNING

The wife of diary-farming Funny Car racer Brent Fanning added a Top Fueler to the Texas-based Udder Nonsense lineup in 1997 and scored her first round-win in just her third start, upsetting that year’s eventual world champ, Gary Scelzi, in Brainerd, but DNQ’d at the five other events she ran that year. The team raced through the 2000 season, flip-flopping between Brent in the Funny Car and Vicky in the dragster (and later in the Funny Car) and alternatively not qualifying or losing in the first round, but the low-on-funds, high-on-fun couple brought smiles to the fans.

GINA MARIE FERRARO

Nineteen-year-old Gina Marie Ferraro, who hailed from Yorba Linda, Calif, the town made famous by 16-time Funny Car champ John Force, made her Top Fuel debut at the 1999 Winternationals in a car sponsored by Chet Herbert Cams and tuned by Ralph Gorr, but failed to qualify there and at the next event, in Phoenix, as well as the 2000 Seattle event in the Glenn Mikres-tuned Peek brothers DriveOff.com entry.

JENNA HADDOCK

Like fellow Texan Vicky Fanning, Jenna Haddock got into the nitro racing business alongside her then husband, in her case, respected journeyman Terry, in 2014 in a canopied ex-Don Schumacher Racing dragster.

She made her debut at the 2014 Denver race and quickly joined the list of rookie drivers to beat the class’ all-time winner, Tony Schumacher, in her first competitive round, then lost to Brittany Force in the next frame. Over the next 14 races spanning 1999-2000, she qualified at nine but didn’t win another round. After the couple split, so did the car. She briefly resurfaced two decades later as the proposed car chief for Audrey Worm, but the team never made it to the track.

RHONDA HARTMAN-SMITH

As the daughter of longtime racer Virgil Hartman, the sister of Funny Car racer and future Tim Wilkerson right-hand man Richard Hartman, and married into the nitro-rich legacy of the Smith family (patriarch Paul and sons John, whom she married, and Mike), it’s no surprise that Rhonda Hartman-Smith enjoyed success in the nitro ranks.

Although the family-run dragster struggled in its first several seasons — nine straight DNQs spanning the 1993-94 campaigns — RHS turned on her first win light at the 1995 Winternationals, where she upset five-time world champ Joe Amato in round one. Although the team continued to struggle, alternating DNQs with first-round losses, they stunned everyone with a semifinal finish at the 1997 U.S. Nationals and became a regular qualifier.

By 2001, during which time she and her husband John drove matching dragsters sponsored by Fram, Hartman-Smith became a regular top 10 finisher (2001-04) and posted a number of semifinal finishes. Today, the family tradition carries on with Megan Smith, daughter of John and Rhonda, as she competes in Top Alcohol Dragster.

KIM LaHAIE

After years of being a star crew chief on the Top Fueler of her father, 1987 world champion Dick LaHaie, Kim LaHaie got the chance to get behind the wheel in the 1992 season, partnering with well-regarded nitro veteran Larry Frazier.

LaHaie made her debut at the 1992 Winternationals, where she failed to qualify, but bounced back and made the field at the next two events, in Phoenix and Houston, where she qualified both times on the bump and lost in round one.

Her greatest Top Fuel moment came at the historic Gatornationals, where she reached the semifinals after eking past legendary racer Don “the Snake” Prudhomme by just 005-second in round one (making her first career four-second pass in the process) and future world champ Scott Kalitta in round two before falling to Eddie Hill in the semi’s.

After a narrow DNQ in Atlanta, she qualified at her next seven races — Memphis, Columbus, Montreal, Englishtown, Denver, Sonoma (career-best 10th), and Seattle — but did not win another round and, without a sponsor, had to park the car.

The next year, she went to work on Chuck Etchells’ Funny Car and tuned the clutch that carried Etchells to the first four-second Funny Car pass that year in Topeka. She married Hall of Fame tuner Tim Richards in 1996 and worked side by side with him for a number of teams, most notably for Connie Kalitta and Kenny Bernstein, and was inducted into the Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.

SUE RANSOM

Sue Ransom was a well-respected road-racing driver in Australia in the 1970s and ‘80s who also had raced in Top Alcohol Dragster before fellow Aussies Phil and Chris McGee recruited her to drive their Top Fueler, which was powered by the revolutionary but oft-troubled McGee quad-cam engine. She had previously partnered with Ken Warby to run his jet dragsters and Funny Cars in the United States.

The Ransom-driven McGee team made five NHRA national event starts, beginning with the 1983 World Finals at Orange County International Raceway, where they failed to qualify. The team ran three races in 1986 — qualifying at the FallNationals in Phoenix, where they broke against future world champ Gary Ormsby in round one — and once in 1987, when they failed to qualify at the Winternationals in their final outing together. Former world champ Gary Beck took over the controls for the next several seasons and qualified at several events.

Ransom, an early adopter of the internet, later co-founded a strategic e-business products and services company, conceived and developed the AutoNews media extranet, worked in public relations for Ford, Mazda, and the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, became a magazine publisher, and co-hosted the popular Australian motorsports show called Torque, and later founded cyber security company Command Hub. (Photo courtesy of Australian Muscle Car magazine)

JO ANN REYNOLDS

Jo Ann Reynolds got her start in Funny Car in 1978, driving Rick McMicheals’ "Pink Chablis" Vega before joining her husband, Mike, in the Top Fuel ranks. Jo Ann competed in Top Fuel at just one NHRA national event, the 1980 World Finals in the last event at Ontario Motor Speedway, but ended up the sixth alternate. The two ran match races for the next several years, and Mike also competed at a handful of national events up through 1984. In 2001, she opened Jo Ann’s Gear Jammer Truck Stop & Café in West Valley, Utah, a popular way stop for truckers on Highway 201 for a dozen years before it closed in 2013.

JASMINE SALINAS

After a successful career in Top Alcohol Dragster in which Jasmine Salinas won twice — in Gainesville and Dallas in 2022 — 2024 was supposed to be a partial-schedule, get-acquainted season in Top Fuel until her father, nine-time class winner Mike Salinas, was sidelined with medical issues after the season opener.

Jasmine made her debut at the Winternationals, and through 12 races so far this season, she has collected three round-wins and has run a string of steady low 3.7-second passes and is a leading candidate for NHRA Rookie of the Year.

ASHLEY SANFORD

After beginning her career in a Top Alcohol Dragster, 23-year-old Southern Californian Ashley Sanford made a splash in her Top Fuel debut at the 2017 U.S. Nationals under the tutelage of the Lagana brothers and also competed at that year’s NHRA Midwest Nationals in St. Louis with Rapisarda Racing. She qualified at both events and seemed destined to have a bright future, but that was the last time she made racing headlines until she showed up behind the wheel of the shark-themed Megalodon monster truck for the 2023 Monster Jam season and won rookie of the year honors. She continues to drive the truck with good success, winning donut, freestyle, and racing events in 2024.

RACHELLE SPLATT

Rachel Splatt, an Australian driver, had a short but memorable five-race stint in NHRA competition in 1994  in the Luxor Hotel & Casino dragster. After a pair of DNQs in Pomona and Phoenix to open the season, she finally qualified at the Houston event, where she drew legendary racer Prudhomme, who was just beginning his “Final Strike” retirement season. 

“The Snake” beat the Aussie, 4.84 to 4.88, but her speed on the pass was 300.20 mph to make her the 16th and final — and only female — member of the Slick 50 300-mph Club.

She scored her first (and only, as it turned out) round-win at the next event, the Gatornationals, where she turned the tables on Prudhomme, who smoked the tires. She lost in round two to Connie Kalitta.

After a DNQ at the next event, in Atlanta, a disagreement arose between Splatt and team owner John DePorter, and she returned to Australia, and in 1995 represented Australia at an international event in Japan and came home with the winner's trophy.

She continued to race Top Fuel through the 2000 season until the birth of her first of five children and has raced sporadically since then. 

AUDREY WORM

Audrey Worm made her Top Fuel debut in the Leverich Racing dragster at the 2017 Reading event, then ran a nine-race 2018 rookie campaign highlighted by advancing to round two of the NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte. She qualified at six of the nine events.

Worm competed in the OutrunPD Parkinson's Disease awareness dragster, helping bring attention to the disease that afflicted both her grandfather and father, and raising money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation to fight Parkinson's Disease.

She qualified at all five races she ran in 2019, then took a big step by taking over as team owner. She bought an ex-Antron Brown/Don Schumacher Racing chassis and in late 2019 announced that she had hired well-respected Ashley Fye as her crew chief for her 2020 season, along with Jenna Drake (née Haddock) as the car chief. The potentially historic all-female-run team mapped out a nine-race schedule of events but a combination of factors, not the least of which was the COVID-19 pandemic, put an end to those plans.

IDA ZETTERSTRÖM

NHRA Top Fuel’s newest female entered the fray at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals and impressed immediately with a semifinal finish as she kicked off a late bid for NHRA Rookie of the Year honors that will carry her through the final eight events of the season with a full campaign planned for 2025. Her first round-win came in her first matchup, where she upset four-time world champion and No. 1 qualifier Steve Torrence on a holeshot.

Ida Zetterström, who hails from the Åland Islands of Finland, began racing in the Jr. Dragster ranks at age 8 before moving up to Super Comp at 16 and then won a pair of Super Street Bike championships, becoming the first woman to win a championship in the class, as well as the first to run in the six-second zone. In 2021, she earned her FIA Top Fuel license, and in 2022, she became the first European Top Fuel driver to dip into the 3.70-second range, earned her first FIA event win, and finished third in the championship standings. 

In 2023, Zetterström picked up four FIA event wins, notched three No. 1 qualifiers, and set both ends of the European Top Fuel record en route to the FIA European championship. She lost just one round of eliminations all season, then joined Joe Maynard’s JCM Racing team for the 2024 season, partnering with and licensing in teammate Tony Schumacher’s dragster before her debut in Brainerd.

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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