Taylor Wheeler, this young lady just turned 18 and is going to be a rookie this year in my club Mohawk Valley Vintage Dirt Modifieds, Vintage Antique class She had a little trouble and missed the first round of warm ups Saturday 04-10-21. She had never driven anything with a carburetor and flooded the engine. Once she got out on the track she did O.K. and had a huge smile on her face when she came back in! This car has buggy springs front and rear.
Hello, While in college in 1965, one of my neighbors, in an adjoining apartment, was a single college girl without a car. She lived far away from home, so she was a college kid without transportation. Luckily, I had a nice 65 El Camino sitting in the apartment garage. So, I volunteered to be at her service at any time. I was a So Cal guy, so driving anywhere in Northern California was going to be a good road trip for exploration. We did go to the Santa Cruz Mountains and the local Berkeley Hills for some great views of the whole SF Bay Area. The bridges were different and nice at the same time. The trip to Santa Cruz had a two fold purpose. One was for me to be able to surf a place called Pleasure Point at a good size swell and a great dinner on the way home. Pleasure Point was just as I thought it would be. A combination of Rincon in Santa Barbara and fast steep waves like Trestles in South Orange County. (except for the kelp) But after a few passing months, she got the idea of buying her own car. She was looking at several styles, but settled on a white Austin Healey sports car. It was typical, as she was blond, flowing long hair and a two seater sports car filled out the image, nicely. The problem was, she never drove a stick shift car, before. So, for weeks, it was a learning experience coordinating the clutch, starts and the shifting. She got better with each trial run and by the time I moved to another apartment, she was having the time of her life. Hopefully, she is still around… crazy girls in lowered sports cars just seems like a situation waiting to happen. All that scene needed was a few tall palm trees swaying in the breezes, as the sporty car zips past. It was something we all have seen in the countless TV shows and movies. Jnaki As the early days of drag racing, helmets were a non required item. The ones available were leather motorcycle ½ helmets and not the powerful safety standard ones we all came to know when Bell came out with their 500 model. Still, it was not good for anything over a 25mph crash, but at least sometimes, anything helps. (research studies from the late 60 -70s and backed up in the 80s) In doing some research for women in drag racing and sports cars, I found one photo and results of the win in the sports car class. It looks like Madeline Stephen took her Corvette hubcaps off and hit the class lanes with glee. Helmet not withstanding, she powered the 55 Corvette with a win and a trophy. C/Sports Car class designation was the class. The look of the photograph could be repositioned on any surface street in So Cal. Sunglasses, a scarf, a lightweight jacket and a smile to boot all play their part of a sports car with a So Cal girl. All part of sports car love and scene reaction. When those early Corvettes came out, they were the best for open top cruising. Having driven around in one during our Bixby Knolls timeline, it certainly drew the attention of anyone driving down the street. Perhaps, it was not as fast as our later modified Chevy Sedans, but formidable none the less.
Drag News 1964 Hello, Before the onslaught of the disappearing sportsman classes for the everyday hot rod fanatic, there were a few women in drag racing. But the ones that were involved were good. “Barbara Hamilton drove herself into the history books as the first woman to receive a National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) license. She used that license to drive a supercharged dragster, a 1937 Willys coupe from 1964 to 1971. She was a great champion and leader, who also became a great role model.” Jnaki Thanks and very impressive… From an old guy that got started with the first hot rod build as a teenager, in a 1940 Willys Coupe for our drag racing adventures in the Gas Coupe and Sedan class, way back then. “Although she became famous for wheeling her blue Willys, Hamilton’s first blown car was the ’34 Ford three-window coupe of friend John Latham. She helped him build the supercharged small-block Chevy that powered the car when she first drove it in 1959 in Erie, Pa. She was just a high-school senior at the time, but those early runs changed the course of her life. She bought the Willys and also built its blown 271-cid small-block Chevy engine as well.” Images Courtesy of Barbara Hamilton Images
Kay Petre -1924 Dodge, a 10.5 litre V12-engined Land Speed Record car she had been racing at Brooklands. a 2.75-mile (4.43 km) motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. HRP
That looks like her Delage. I've never heard of her driving a Dodge, but she was Canadian by birth, so who knows.
John Duff You've likely never heard of John Duff, but you should. He danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight, taming an 18L (yes, eighteen litres!) Fiat racer called Mephistopheles and setting over fifty racing and speed records. He finished in the top ten of his first Indy 500, back when the race was deadlier than a WWI slit trench, and he posted an outright victory in the second ever 24 Hours of Le Mans. Born in China in 1895, Duff's parents were originally from Hamilton, and it was there he was sent for a typically starchy Victorian-era education. It didn't work: by the time Duff hit his early twenties, he was already ripping around the famous Brooklands circuit, just as fast as the best the world had seen. Perhaps his crowning moment was the victory at Le Mans in 1924. Not only was this the second-only running of the event (he'd also raced in the first Le Mans), but it was the very first Le Mans win for a little ol’ company called Bentley. In 1926, he suffered yet another serious crash and decided to retire from racing. Instead, he took up fencing and riding, including doubling for Hollywood star Gary Cooper in sword-fighting scenes. Kay Petre Four foot ten inches tall, yet they called her the Queen of Brooklands. In a time when racing was a dangerous activity best left to the menfolk, or so the prevailing attitude said, the tiny Kay Petre cast a huge shadow. When she showed up to race at Brooklands in a massive Delage with a 10.5L V12 engine, the media of the time lost their collective minds. Born in Toronto, Petre's racing career extends to stints at Le Mans and several Grand Prix. She raced against all the greats, including Auto Union's Bernd Rosemeyer, and would go on to establish a reputation as a dominant hill-climb racer. Like Duff, she retired from racing after a serious accident, and would go on to live into her nineties. Great Canadian Racers | Pop Culture | AutoTrader.ca
I also remember Barb from Quaker city, probably around 1962 or 1963. If I remember correctly, She worked on her own car as well as being a heck of a driver. Dave
Honorable Mention: Lucy Schell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_O'Reilly_Schell Great book about her rally racing and her race team, racing in the 1930s in Europe(I've read it, very interesting): Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best by Neal Bascomb ISBN: 9781328489876 (hardcover) ISBN: 9781328489838 (e-book) They were the unlikeliest of heroes. Rene Dreyfus, a former top driver on the international racecar circuit, had been banned from the best European teams—and fastest cars—by the mid-1930s because of his Jewish heritage. Charles Weiffenbach, head of the down-on-its-luck automaker Delahaye, was desperately trying to save his company as the world teetered toward the brink. And Lucy Schell, the adventurous daughter of an American multi-millionaire, yearned to reclaim the glory of her rally-driving days.
That's Peggy Brendel and Kathy Taylor with Peggy's A/Street Roadster, she 114 MPH at Santa Ana in the early 50's - later went 118. Her husband Irv owned a service station/Hot Rod shop in Santa Monica . In the 1960s, Peggy and Irv branched out into building and racing hydro drag boats.
Two months after she bought her '56 Corvette, 50-year-old Davenport, Iowa, cosmetologist, Stella Booth, attended her first drag race at Quad-City Drag Strip near Cordova. "I was floored when someone asked me to drive my car down the strip," she said. "I cried all the way down the track. I wasn't frightened. I cried for joy because I knew I was winning. It was really very thrilling." She came away with a trophy. She was hooked. She continued racing for several years, the only woman who raced regularly at Quad-City in the late 1950s. She was also the only woman in 400 entries competing in the World Series of Drag Racing in 1958 at Cordova. It was thought that she was also the only drag racing grandmother in the country. In 1958 she added a supercharger to her Corvette and competed in modified sports.
Peggy Hart, wife of C. J. "Pappy" Hart, worked together in lock-step to found and operate the Santa Ana Drags from 1950-59. Peggy was an accomplished drag racer in her own right, besting her male competitors with frequent regularity. She was adept at driving roadsters or dragsters. Inseparable as a couple, Peggy helped C. J. manage Lions Drag Strip from 1963 until its closure in 1972
Ralph Heim took his 1927 Model T roadster to the Pomona Drag Strip when it first opened. He let his sister, Grace Chelie, drive it a few times. It was at one of these races at Pomona when Grace was driving the street roadster when Ralph brought a date. Doris was dating Ralph Heim and spent Sundays with him at the drag strip. The two married in 1953. Grace had stopped driving before her brother and Doris had married. The car fishtailed once and it frightened her. But Doris thought it looked fun. She began driving--and winning--at the wheel of the B Street Roadster at drag strips all over Southern California: Pomona, Paradise Mesa, Saugus, and Santa Ana.
Louise and Jeri Phillips got interested in drag racing when their friends, Roger and Carol Cawley, of Des Moines, built a rear-engine dragster. Roger helped Jeri build a '32 Ford roadster that Louise drove. She raced it at Des Moines Dragway, Cordova, and Alton drag strips in the late 1950s into the early 1960s. Jeri got his nickname, "Jumpin'" Jeri, because of his high-in-the-air starting maneuvers as the flagman at Des Moines Dragway. Ed Phillips (the shorter of the two little boys standing to the left of their mother, Louise, in the photo above), said of his mother, "She never lost that lead foot."
Glenna Merlene Poole, from Muscatine, Iowa, was the wife of Warren Poole. She drove her husband's blown Chrysler dragster.
The mother of two children, Helen Root started drag racing in Southern California at least as early as 1953. Living in Norwalk, she and her husband, Barton Root, were the parents of two children. Helen and Bart shared driving duties with their '29 roadster, mostly racing at Pomona or sometimes at San Gabriel. In 1955, she won the California state championship in her Class C street roadster. She competed in the first NHRA Nationals in Detroit in 1955.
Just seventeen years old, she was attending Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson when she was tabbed to be the driver of the Six Saints car club's A Street Roadster. In May 1956, she clocked 80 mph and narrowly missed winning her class at the newly-opened drag strip at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. She was the only female competitor on the D-M strip and was unofficially recognized as the "queen of the drag strip." After graduating from high school in 1957, she entered nursing school.
From Stickney, Illinois, Mrs, Lynn Sturmer drove a Chevy-engined B/GD called "Bean Bandit" at U.S. 30 Dragway in Gary, Indiana in the latter half of 1958. When she started racing the dragster, she ran in the mid-13s at about 107 mph. She made steady improvements, getting one top eliminator win, and clocking a season-best time of 11.70 at 120 mph.
Diana Vandenberg raced at Santa Ana in the 1950s. "My ’32 Ford was my first love,” she said. “I was one of the few (women) who got into a competition coupe that was stripped down as far as we could with the biggest engine we could put in it.” Vandenberg got into racing because it was a family pastime. She often helped her father maintain the four-cylinder Fords he used for his citrus-spraying business. “I was his No. 1 son, I guess,” Vandenberg said. “My mother even drove a stock car at the drags.” Vandenberg didn’t do too well starting out, but later, she began collecting trophies. “The secret was my shifting . . . and I only weighed 98 pounds at the most, so that helped, too,” she said. “I had an eye for the flag. I could get off the line faster than most. My best time was 103 (mph) in about 13 or 14 seconds. I’m very proud of the fact that I was able to do that.” She lived in Seal Beach when these excerpts from the story in the Orange County Register was published on April 8, 2010.
Affectionately called "Queenie," or the "Queen of San Fernando Drag Strip," Fran was the president of the Throttle Queens women's racing club. She was also the only woman member of the Sidewinders Club. Married to Harold Woerner, she had taken over 30 class wins in 1957 at San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley Drag Strip. She raced a '56 Chevy in F Stock and a Corvette. She continued her winning ways through 1958 and 1959.
My above posts were from a site called Speed Queens of the Drag Strip by a fella named Mel Bashore. All credit to him!
We raced with one lady at Islip, a hold over from the defunct Power Puff division. Yolanda Sheridan, pictured on the top row of the Old Timers. A very nice lady but not too competitive running with us. She was the mom of another racer. http://www.longislandjam.com/news/oldtimers040829/ There was a younger lady maybe around 20 that raced with us until she got a hand stuck in a steering wheel and broke her wrist.
My website is called "Women Drag Racers: Pioneers of the First Three Decades." "Speed Queens of the Drag Strip" is just the header on each page. The link to see the website is: https://benelliman.wixsite.com/women-drag-racers
The Jalopy Journal
