On a late summer Saturday in Brainerd, Minnesota, rookie driver Maddi Gordon waited at the starting line in a roaring lime green Top Fuel dragster, one of the most extreme machines in motorsports.

When she hit the throttle and launched, the engine sounded like a pile driver wired to a jet engine. I was perhaps 20 feet from the car, and the blast lifted the baseball cap off my head. Before I could retrieve it, she’d clocked 336.99 mph, covered 1,000 feet in 3.695 seconds, and posted a quicker time than former national champion Shawn Langdon.

Later, in the pits, fans crowded around Gordon for autographs and pictures. That she is a 22-year-old woman — and, after Brainerd, one of two women ranked in the top five in Top Fuel1— barely warrants comment at the track. In Formula 1, NASCAR, IndyCar or most other major motorsports, it would be headlining news. That shows how far drag racing has outpaced the others on inclusivity, offering a model for sports that still treat women competing at the highest level as a novelty.

Women are still a minority in drag racing, but they have been driving, winning and setting records for decades in the National Hot Rod Association — the country’s premier drag racing organization.

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