Inside the world of drag racing.

Jack Muldowney, who not only shared his last name with one of drag racing's greatest legends, three-time NHRA Top Fuel world champ Shirley Muldowney, but more importantly helped launch her career, passed away May 24 of cancer. He was 70.

Shirley married Muldowney, an amateur hot rodder, at age 17, and it was his love of fast cars that ultimately gave Shirley her start on the quarter-mile, first in a variety of street cars and then an injected gas dragster. The duo racked up more than 200 wins in their early days.

Muldowney, a longtime member of Schenectady N.Y.'s Road Kings Car Club, hand-built that first dragster in which Shirley earned her dragster license in 1965 and the couple match raced in the East and Midwest. That injected car was followed by a pair of blown gas dragsters, the second being a twin-engine monster with which she competed at the 1969 and 1970 U.S. Nationals and at Division 1 events.

Labels: Heart Like a Wheel, Jack Muldowney, Jack Muldowney dies, NHRA Nitro Funny Cars, Shirley Muldowney