Take 5 With Shirley Shahan

Shirley Shahan is the first woman to win an NHRA event in a pro class.

- Thom-Taylor

While that’s a drag-racing milestone and represents a legendary accomplishment, especially in 1965 when drag racing was completely dominated by men, if that’s all you know about her life, then you only know the easy part. Known as the “Drag- On-Lady” with then-husband HL Shahan, who tuned her cars, she was also working full time raising three children as well as participating in another sport she loved: fast-pitch softball. Softball developed her upper body, which helped slamming a four-speed in the quarter-mile. Racing every weekend in the 1950s with her kids in tow, she won the first Bakersfield March Meet in 1959 with her four-speed 1958 Chevy in a Super Stock field of 40 men. By the mid-1960s she was racing for Plymouth full time. A woman winning races in those pre-women’s lib days did not always go over well with the competition, and she was winning a lot of races. Switching to AMC products in 1968, she represented the company both on and off of the track, as her novelty status and winning ways brought attention to the company. With AMC funding diverted away from drag racing in 1972, and with a chance for HL to build racing engines full time, Shirley’s drag-racing career ended. Also in 1972, another Shirley came on the national drag-racing scene. Shahan’s racing career included both AFX altered-wheelbase nitro cars and Super Stock, becoming Pro Stock in 1970.

She’s now retired from her more than 30 years with the So Cal Gas Company, traveling and enjoying life with her second husband of almost 40 years, Ken. In 1997 she was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame, and in 2005 she received the NHRA Lifetime Achievement Award.

HRM] There’s a rumor you were racing while you were eight months pregnant?

SS] I don’t know that I was eight months pregnant, but I was pretty pregnant.