Drag Racing Is The Great American Motorsport: Here’s Why

Open wheel racing promotes the Indianapolis 500 as the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. As a native Hoosier, I’d tend to agree. Stock car racing contests what it has dubbed the Great American Race. As said native Hoosier, I’d personally yield that one back to the circle city. But the great American motorsport? That’s drag racing.

As Americans, we are often defined by individualism, independence, equality, achievement, and other similar values and traits. But we are also a people who prefer our things big, fast, loud, shiny, and expensive. Call that bold, or rugged, masculine or obnoxious, whatever term you choose. But nothing in racing — hell, not even the world — is quite as extreme and to excess as drag racing. Three hundred miles per hour in the distance of two football fields. The ground literally registering minor earthquakes on the Richter scale. At nearly 150 decibels, enough sound to cause immediate cranial nerve damage and be heard for miles. And with 22,000 combined horsepower, the equivalent between two cars of the first 12 1/2 rows of a NASCAR Cup Series race, or the entire current Formula 1 grid.

Organized, sanctioned drag racing was founded in 1951, officially three years after NASCAR, a year after the first Formula 1 world championship, and 40 years after the inaugural Indianapolis 500 mile race. But as the old wive’s tale goes, drag racing actually got its start when the second automobile was built. While that’s perhaps a bit of a stretch of the truth, it’s probably not far off. And in that sense, we like to think of drag racing as the world’s oldest motorsport. You see, an acceleration contest is distinctly American. It’s masculine and rivalrous. We’ve spent billions to see big, burly boxers knock each other around the ring. Millions of us eagerly watch NFL defenders bury running backs into the dirt. We’re unified yet fiercely independent, and whether it’s war, hot dog-easting contests, TikTok likes, or our alma mater’s athletics teams, we want to win and you to lose. Everything is a competition in America. And a drag race — me versus you, one on one, here and now — is the ultimate competition on wheels.

Find this scene at any other major motorsports event anywhere in the world … and without a single purchased pit pass. Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

With tickets priced lower than virtually every other comparable level of racing in other genres, drag racing is the greatest bargain in all of motorsports. In no other major-league motorsport is every ticket a pit pass, putting fans up close and personal with running cars and their drivers and crews, creating an entire experience worthy of the admission, even off the track. Go to the majority of smaller events and you nearly have the run of the place — try that even at a local dirt track, much less a high-level NASCAR race. In no other motorsport can you watch the legends of the sport race at your nearest venue, and compete with your own road-going car on the same racetrack the following weekend. Or your five-year-old child race their junior dragster on said track. In no other motorsport can a man just shy of 90 years of age (Chris Karamesines) and an 18-year-old college student (Bobby Bode) race competitively at 300 mph. Nowhere else can you find airline and oil magnates and tequila heirs competing professionally on the same stage — as equals — with hired-gun race car drivers and 9-5 working-class grunts living the dream on grease and Ramen with no chance of fortune, at the sport’s highest level. 

But let’s go beyond the cars and the experience itself, and discuss another key American trait: diversity.

Consider the varied makeup of what are arguably the seven most popular drag racers in the world. John Force is a 74-year-old man who can command a crowd like no one else in racing, and has maintained competitiveness and relevance decades longer than his counterparts in other forms of motorsport. Erica Enders, a female, a six-time series champion and arguably the best Pro Stock driver of her generation. Antron Brown, an African-American man and unquestionably one of the greatest role models in the entire motorsports universe. Lizzy Musi, a second-generation star female driver with an impeccable racing resume in some of the most challenging machines to wheel in the sport. Steve Jackson, a trash-talking, self-made grudge racer from the backwoods of Georgia. Shawn “Murder Nova” Ellington, a tattooed, flip flop-wearing, real-deal street racer from Oklahoma. And Garrett Mitchell, better known as Cleetus McFarland, a 28-year-old gearhead who rode an energetic redneck-esque persona from obscurity to YouTube stardom.

No two are anything alike, and at a time when you can hardly tell any two drivers apart in any other form of auto racing, their diversity is a breathe of fresh air.

Certainly, with drivers hailing from nation’s around the globe, Formula 1 has ethnic diversity on its side. But conversely, it has not had a female entry since 1992, has only had five female entries in its entire history, and only two have ever qualified for a grand prix. Recently, Jessica Hawkins became the first female to drive a Formula 1 car in a test session in half decade.

Twenty women have entered a NASCAR Cup Series race since 1949; 16 have started a race, none have won, and only one has finished in the top five (and that was in 1949). Only two ladies have entered a race since 2001, three since 1990, and seven since 1980. Only nine women have started the aforementioned Greatest Spectacle in Racing, the Indianapolis 500, in 107 runnings; only one woman has ever won an IndyCar race. Monster Energy Supercross has never had a woman start a main event heat. IMSA has had a handful of female drivers thoughout its history, and even boasts an all-female team in 2023, to its credit. But drag racing is on a different level. Shirley Muldowney won three NHRA championships in her career. The aforementioned Enders has won six. Angelle Sampey has won three championships. Brittany Force two. Megan Meyer won two titles. Rachel Meyer, Leah Pruett, Amy Faulk, Jackie Alley, Mia Tedesco, and Allison Doll have all won one championship. 

Shirley Shahan scored the first national event by a female driver at the Winternationals in 1966, and since then, there have been a swath of impressive feats by women drivers. Muldowney won her first Top Fuel race in 1975, Ashley Force Hood became the first female winner in Funny Car in 2008, Enders the first in Pro Stock in 2012, and Sampey in Pro Stock Motorcycle in 1996 — all of them either leading or following a lineage of ladies in their respective category. At the professional level alone, women have won 193 national events; 93 of those have been added just since 2014.

The National Hot Rod Association crowned two female world champions (Erica Enders, Pro Stock; and Brittany Force, Top Fuel) in 2021. Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Melanie Troxel won in both Top Fuel and Funny Car in the 2000s, and Lauren Freer became the first female sportsman racer to double in two categories in 2023, just to name a couple feats by our leading ladies. The NHRA has not only had three female winners at the same national event, but three female world champions in the same season.

One hundred and twenty-five women in all have competed in NASCAR’s 19 touring series throughout their history, which is a good number — but you’ll find 125 women competing in NHRA’s touring and sanctioned series on any given weekend. Female drivers have won in every single active eliminator in the NHRA. They’ve won Street Outlaws No Prep Kings races, in NMCA, the PDRA, IHRA, and virtually anywhere and everywhere organized acceleration contests occur. 

While the presence of a lady in other forms of motorsports remains a rare and extraordinary event, they have been such a significant part of the fabric of drag racing for so long that we don’t even bat an eye when a female is in the other lane anymore. In our world, we don’t see male and female, we see race car drivers.

According to data from the NHRA, nearly a quarter of all youth junior dragster drivers are female, and 5 percent of the 35,000 licensed NHRA drivers are women. That’s 1,750 women. And that’s only licensed NHRA drivers.

Amber Franklin, a PDRA series champion.

Just 19 African-Americans have entered a race at any of NASCAR’s top three levels since 1955 (eight in the Cup Series). To be fair, there are more active African-American drivers in NASCAR today than at any one time in its history. Formula 1 has had just one black driver, and IndyCar just two. But drag racing has more African-American drivers and fans than any other motorsport in the country, bar none. There are more than twice as many black men competing in the NHRA’s professional series right now as there have been in Formula 1 and IndyCar combined ever. And the number of African-American men and women in our sport only grows as you add up all the other venues and series where they compete and campaign cars.

Antron Brown

Our sport has had champion drivers from the Middle East, from Canada, Mexico, Japan, Europe, Australia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and beyond. We have black and white and brown, we have male and female, rich and poor. Old and young (this year’s most celebrated champion is a 59-year-old man, and it’s Super Stock champion 23). There are fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents racing their grandchildren. A further sign of diversity and acceptance, an openly gay man is even following in his late father’s footsteps to NHRA nitro racing. We’ve got former NBA players and current NFL players, reality show TV stars, and thousands more with equally compelling life stories we wish we had the time and space to tell.

As NHRA on FOX’s Brian Lohnes once said so simply yet succinctly: “you want a diversity program? We call it drag racing.”

Small-tire racers and tuners, brothers DJ and Ryan McCain.

When our nation has been embroiled in racial and social unrest, in violence in the streets, when political battle lines have separated friends and family, the one place where people of every color and creed and background have peacefully welcomed one another with open arms in even the most contentious regions in the name of a shared passion is a drag race. Where NASCAR has struggled to manage diversity and acceptance by its fans, drag racing has thrived.

We’ve got rich man’s cars, and those financially obtainable on a blue-collar wage. Go-fast racing and strategy-based racing for the hobbyist. We’ve got Chevrolet’s and Ford’s, Toyota’s and Honda’s and Nissan’s. Cars and trucks and bikes. And there are than 440 active drag strips in this country to race, and every one of them will welcome you to play, no matter your finances, your car, your knowledge of the sport, your skill level, your gender, or your color.

Second-generation drag racer Travis Shumake, an openly gay man, is a regular and welcomed face in the NHRA nitro pits as he forges his path into Top Fuel competition.

Needless to say, whether you’re a fan looking for value and an experience unlike what any other major-league American (or international) motorsport can offer, a lady looking for a female driver to support, an African-American or a Puerto Rican or a Brazilian driver looking for somewhere to belong, to see fast cars, slow cars, cars that just look yours or nothing like yours, drag racing is the sport of opportunity. And that is precisely what defines America. 

One automotive journalist at a keyboard can’t accomplish a lot to elevate our great sport in the eyes of the American motorsport masses, but you can — you can share this story with your roundy-round buddies, the sports car and motocross and F1 fanatics in your life, and tell them the good news of drag racing. It’s hard to believe that a sport that’s more than 70 years old could be auto racing’s best kept secret, but in my eyes, that’s what drag racing is, and outsiders need to hear it. Turn on the TV at your local sports pub, take your buddies to a race, do what ‘ya gotta’ do. Because this is the motorsport and the diverse, unique, and eclectic group of people that Americans should be paying attention to. This is the motorsport Netflix should be telling the story of, the motorsport corporate America should be investing itself in, and you won’t change my mind.