Muldowney, Shirley (Roques)
Drag racing
b. June 19, 1940, Schenectady, NY
Shirley Roques dropped out of high school at seventeen to marry Jack Muldowney, an amateur hot rodder. She began drag racing for grocery money in a 1940 Ford coupe with a Cadillac engine. When she decided to become a professional drag racer in 1972, her marriage broke up.
Conrad "Connie" Kalitta, a colorful racer, became her agent and gave her the nickname "Cha Cha," which she didn't like. But, with his help, she became a top driver in "funny cars," which are dragsters with fiberglass bodies made to look like ordinary street cars.
In 1974, Muldowney moved into top fuel dragsters. Driving a hot pink car that became her trademark, she won three consecutive national events in 1977 and became the first woman to win the Winston world championship.
There were those who thought Kalitta, as her crew chief, was the main reason for her success, so Muldowney went off on her own. With her son, John, as a crew member, she won the 1980 Winston title. She was the first driver of either sex to win two world championships, and she won a third in 1982, when she also beat Kalitta to win the U. S. Nationals for the first and only time.
A movie about her life, Heart Like a Wheel, was produced in 1983 with Muldowney as creative consultant. The following year, she suffered terrible injuries when a tire blew while she was traveling 50 miles an hour. She spent eighteen months in rehabilitation, learning to walk again, but she returned to drag racing in 1986.
In 1991, Muldowney began traveling the match race circuit. Over the next four years, she set track records at more than a dozen tracks. She returned to open competition in 1995 and the following year she finished second in the International Hot Rod Association's top fuel category.
Since 1997, she has continued to race in both open competition and match competition and has set several more track records.