Call them drag-racing rock stars, if you like, if you buy into the latest buzz. But that’s not what Alexis DeJoria and husband Jesse James are.

She is the Phoenix-legitimized Funny Car winner, and he is an extra hand on her Kalitta Motorsports Patrón XO Cafe Toyota Camry.

Photo courtesy Gary Nastase/Alexis DeJoria Racing

Yes, they radiate a radical vibe. They have that casually scruffy edge with a profusion of multicolored tattoos, an I-don’t-care-what-the-world-thinks countenance that seemed to work amazingly well for Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, and a breezy, boundless energy and curiosity. They clearly love what they’re doing. They love being elbow-deep in the subculture of mechanical precision, quick blasts of G-forces and negative-Gs, swashbuckling characters armed with both intuition and intensity, and navigating that tightrope of complete or calamitous – all of it infused with the smell of motor oil, smoking rubber, and nitromethane.

DeJoria did say at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park that they planned to celebrate her first Funny Car triumph with a trip to Tahiti, something out of financial reach for most of her peers. And she has matter-of-factly mentioned the exotic locales where her family maintains homes. She’s simply talking about what she knows.

James has starred in his own television shows and battled other celebrities for Donald Trump’s blessing on “The Apprentice.” Still, DeJoria has far more to her credit than simply being James’ wife or the daughter of business tycoon and philanthropist John Paul DeJoria, owner of Paul Mitchell Hair Care Products, Patron Tequila, and John Paul Pet Products.

She has traveled on her own diplomatic mission to Korea, advocated for baby seals aboard the Sea Shepherd conservation vessel in the frigid Canadian Maritimes, organized a mammogram campaign at the dragstrip, modeled, flown an F-15 Strike Eagle fighter jet, raced in the grinding Baja 1000 off-road classic, and for many years juggled being a strict single mother with being a let-‘er-rip race car owner-driver in the Top Alcohol Funny Car ranks.

Photo courtesy Gary Nastase/Alexis DeJoria Racing

And this NHRA scene is hers. It’s her stage. She’s rockin’ it. She has embraced that saying: Funny Car, Serious Business.

Any wild, extreme, headstrong image she has sculpted for herself, she said, “has nothing to do with my career and what me wanting to win a race is all about. It is nice, though, to finally be able to find someone like [James] who appreciates and respects what I do and can hang with me, basically, in the pits. And he’s got a common respect for the guys and they like having him there, because he’s also an extra set of hands on the car when we need it and he knows what he’s doing. So it’s really nice to have that support from my husband.

“But the whole rock star thing, I don’t know. I guess I’m so focused in my little world that I don’t really see any of that,” DeJoria said. “But the fans are really supportive. When he’s done working on the car, he’ll go up to the ropes and sign some autographs and stuff. But he doesn’t want to steal my thunder. He’s like, ‘I’m not here for me. It’s all about you.’ So he’s been really cute about it. But it’s nice to have that. Of course, my father comes out to the race track, and the fans love having him out there as well.”

But she is a strong presence not overshadowed by either father or husband.

James does work on her Toyota Camry but clearly at the request only of crew chief Tommy DeLago and assistant Glen Huszar. DeJoria said James has no particular assignment. She said he does “whatever he’s told to do, basically, whatever the guys need him to do.”

DeJoria said, “Whether it’s welding on the steering wheel or draining the oil from the chassis, refueling the tanks, cleaning parts, whatever. He was helping out our car chief this last race in Phoenix because he had hurt his ankle from the race prior, so anything and everything.”

While this might sound like the ideal situation for a marriage – with the husband doing “whatever he’s told to do” – that’s not the spin DeJoria puts on any of it. She even squirmed a bit at the notion of being a role model to young women.

“It’s hard to go out there and say I consider myself to be a role model. Nobody’s perfect,” she said. “But I think if I can go out there and show girls that they have other options, you know, that anything is possible and if they have determination and perseverance, they can accomplish anything.”

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Her own role model, she said, was “definitely my father. He worked really hard to get to where he is today. He’s a very successful businessman and philanthropist and a wonderful father. He taught us from the very beginning to fight for what you believe in [and] stay focused and try to find something that you’re passionate about. If you’re passionate about something and you can make it work and make it your profession, you’ll be very successful.”

DeJoria’s huge dreams don’t come with a huge ego. She has made it clear she’s no pop-culture flash in the pan who’ll flame out as quick as that 3.997-second salvo she fired at Pomona, Calif., in February.

DeJoria on her way to the first professional win of her career over Robert Hight in the funny Car final at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports in Phoenix. Photo courtesy Gary Nastase/Alexis DeJoria Racing

“I’m very much in that seat, and I plan to be here for quite awhile,” she said, acknowledging that mixing motherhood and racing “can be a challenge. But I love a good challenge. Life is a challenge. I love my daughter. I love racing. We make it work. I love the fact I’m a mother. But if I were only a mom or only racing, I don’t think I would feel as complete as I do now, having both.”

Then after winning at Phoenix, DeJoria said, “I worked my way up from the sportsman ranks, and it was worth every ride, every run that I made down that racetrack and all those cars that I ran. It was so, so worth it, because I have that much more appreciation for what I’m doing today.”

What she’s doing today is a passion that has been developing for more than 30 years. DeJoria, 36, said she has wanted to be a racer since she was five years old.

“When I was five, I saw that movie ‘Cannonball Run.’ And I wanted a Lamborghini Countach so bad. I made a bet with my dad. I don’t know. I just gravitated towards it. As soon as I got in high school, I got myself a ’67 Chevelle SS with a 454 big block in it and raced that around. I was kind of like the wild child of the family. Everyone kind of went towards the family business, and I did at first, but I still had that drive in me. I wanted to go out and race.”

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Her dad, she said, “wasn’t very surprised at all. No one from my family comes from racing professionally. I guess I could say he’s done Cannonball-style races all over the world and done really well and had amazing stories when he would come home from them. But I’ve always kind of been the sports enthusiast. I played all sports in school . . . snowboard, riding dirt bikes, and whatever. But he was pretty proud though, when he saw just how determined I was and when he saw, ‘Hey – you know what?’ She can do this. And she’s going to be good at it.’ “

She’s getting better and better at it. Her fellow racers have noticed it.

John Force, the icon she dusted off in the semifinal round at Phoenix, called her “the Patrón girl” but said, “She really is a tiger. We’re excited. Even though she beat Robert [Hight, of John Force Racing] in the final, we’re really excited for her and for her dad and everybody, because we’ve got to build new stars.”

Top Fuel’s Antron Brown indicated that DeJoria quickly is becoming one.

“Don’t let Alexis’ demeanor fool you because she’s modest and humble, but that girl is out for blood,” he said. “You line up against her, and she’s going to try to chop your head off. I tell her all the time and she laughs and giggles, and she’s got all you guys in the media fooled.”

Said Brown, the 2012 Top Fuel champion, “They are out there to win it. If you know her crew chief, Tommy DeLago, and Glen [assistant Huszar], they’re the ones that brought Matt Hagan his first championship in Funny Car. Everybody knew it was a matter of time. A championship-caliber team does not happen overnight. It takes synergy and time to jell and build. The Lakers dynasty wasn’t built overnight, but it could be lost overnight if you lose a couple key players. That is the same thing in our sport. It’s the exact same thing where now Alexis got the pieces. They’ve been together long enough to actually grow, and you’ve seen them grow. They grew last year. Now the car is going down the track every lap. Not just consistently, but fast. She had a couple of times where she was low E.T. of the round. When you look at that, that’s where it starts.

“Now Alexis is getting her confidence, she’s cutting the lights, and she’s keeping the car in the groove. That team is just as deadly as any other team in Funny Car,” he said.

That’s just what she wants her on-track rivals to think, but she didn’t jump to grandiose daydreaming.

“We have a long way to go. We’ve just won one race. But our short-term goal right now is to stay in the top 10. And whatever happens after that happens,” DeJoria said. Her immediate aim is to “keep the consistency getting the car down the racetrack and hopefully win more rounds and win more races before the season is over.”

It sounded modest, and she indicated she wasn’t being mock-humble: “I don’t want to get ahead of myself. We won one race. This is our first race. We have a ways to go. I think there have been drivers in the past that have never won a race and they qualified really well and went rounds and consistently won championships.”

She said her Patrón XO Cafe Toyota crew chiefs “know how these things can go. You can go really strong in the beginning of the season and fizzle out toward the end. So you never know how it’s going to be. You just have to take it race by race.”

No rock-star swagger there. However, if DeJoria is a “rock star of drag racing,” then it’s because she shares some of their habits. Rock stars look glamorous onstage, but before that, they have pored over details of the venue, stage, lights, sound, and special plans for their show. Likewise, DeJoria thinks about the racing surface, weather, tune-up, and even her own emotional status and preparedness before each run. And just as rock stars have managers, agents, promoters, roadies, and security personnel, DeJoria has to trust DeLago, Huszar, her crew members, Kalitta Motorsports Vice-President Jim Oberhofer, the NHRA, and others.  

She that during her winning day at Phoenix, “I just felt really good and calm and collected. It was my first semifinal in a while and I felt like we had a car to win the whole thing. Last year was kind of like a learning experience for the whole team in just getting it all right. They’re amazing. It’s been so great to work with Tommy and Glen. They’re hardcore. They know how to win races and championships.”

She has raised the Wally trophy. She has stood by the fireworks and under the confetti, up on the winners stage, beaming in front of cheering fans. And it felt satisfying. Somewhere in the sea of Kalitta Motorsports supporters and race fans were Jesse James and John Paul DeJoria, and they were smiling. For at least one night she was the queen of the Funny Car class.

And she had that Freddie Mercury attitude: “I want it all and I want it now.”