“Fastest Woman on Wheels” Paula Murphy Has Passed

This third week of December has not been kind to the motorsports community. On the 20th of this month, Don Schumacher passed. A day later we lost the “Fastest Woman on Wheels,” whose drag racing and land-speed record exploits enabled all who came after her in the sport. Paula Murphy, the first woman licensed to race a Funny Car, died on December 21. She was 95 years old.

Known as Miss STP for the company’s sponsorship she earned, Murphy started drag racing in 1964 when the sport was in its nascent period. Her Olds 442, entered by the Los Angeles and Orange County Dealers Association, had prep from Mopar legend Dick Landy; she raced that Oldsmobile for a couple of years in the Stock Eliminator class.

At one of her Southern California outings on the Irwindale Raceway dragstrip, Murphy met Jack Bynum, who became her crew chief, mentor and close friend. He built a Ford Mustang Funny Car body for her, built and installed the 392 engine that powered the Mustang. The car and driver were good for eight-second passes as they ran through the 1967 racing season; Murphy became a popular draw with track operators and fans, all wanting to see the “lady racer.”

Even before she began straight-line racing, Murphy had been the only woman allowed to drive an Indy car at speed on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.5-mile historic oval; she drove a Studebaker with a Novi engine installed. That might have been a first at the time, but it was the first of many “firsts” for the Ohio native, born in June of 1928, who excelled on race tracks, on salt and on closed roads in competition.

It was her meeting with STP’s Andy Granatelli that brought Murphy to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1963, where she set a women’s land-speed record in a Studebaker Avanti at 161mph. He provided sponsorship for her Funny Car effort and that’s how she gained the sobriquet, Miss STP.

“I was a real oddity,” Murphy said, “and I think a a lot of strip operators thought it was pretty good to sell tickets. I didn’t have problems getting booking dates. I was very well accepted, not only by the tracks but by my fellow racers. Back then, there was a lot of camaraderie between the teams, helping one another out. We were a big family.” That ideology remains a part of the NHRA community today.

Murphy continued with her Mustang in the mid-1960s and broke into the seven-second range, and she exceeded 200mph in 1968, but the car, which didn’t have a windshield when she started racing it was showing its age. Murphy bought a Don Hardy-built Plymouth Barracuda for the 1969 season, picking up a car originally constructed for Larry Reyes before he signed with Roland Leong for the season.

Invited to drive the STP Dodge stock car of Fred Lorenzen in 1971, Murphy broke NASCAR’s women’s closed-course record at 171.499 mph at Talladega Superspeedway. Her team acquired a new Duster-bodied Funny Car that toured the United States and also went to the UK in 1973. It was there that she toured with the late Don Schumacher, as part of a three-weekend trip.

Murphy then segued to Tony Fox’s hydrogen peroxide-powered Pollution Packer rocket dragster, taking that monster to a 258-mph pass at the NHRA Winternationals. She was scheduled to race Ky Michaelson’s rocket dragster in 1974 before tragedy nearly struck.

In early 1974 she was racing at Sears Point Raceway (now known as Sonoma Raceway) in Northern California. She made a 258-mph pass down the quarter-mile dragstrip, but then the hydrogen peroxide-fueled rocket car refused to shut down. Murphy deployed both parachutes but they ripped right off the car, sending car and driver off the end of the track at about 300mph. After rolling end-over-end several times, Murphy suffered a broken neck. She was fortunate to survive the crash and it definitely didn’t stop her.

Murphy set a record for an around-the-world drive before returning to drag racing in 1976 with a B/Modified Compact Datsun; she would later wheel a front-wheel-drive Z/Stock Honda Civic, touring the country before retiring from racing. Murphy was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2017.

“I got really, really lucky,” she recalled of her career. “I don’t think many people have gotten the opportunity to do some of the things that I did. I don’t look at myself as anything special; it was just the time for a woman to try to drive a Funny Car, and I let rather proud that I was the one,” Murphy modestly stated.

In addition to her exploits on dragstrips, Paula Murphy set numerous speed records, including a Mexico-to-Canada route, a New York-to-Los Angeles route and many more. In May of 2023, Paula Murphy was feted by the Women in Motorsports North America group at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles.

The award-winning documentary about Paula Murphy’s incredible racing career, Paula Murphy: Undaunted, is being shown in her honor tonight, December 21, on FS1. There are two showings scheduled: 6PM and 11PM ET.

Longtime NHRA announcer Jon Lundberg, learning about Murphy’s death noted, “While it is certainly sad that we are lessened by her leaving us, let us be thankful that she is no longer in any pain and freed of any human constraints, to pursue what’s next. May the spirit of Paula Murphy forever soar with the angels.”

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