Shirley Muldowney's flight from Southern California was still taxiing to the terminal at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport on Sunday as she hurriedly powered on her cellphone. A guest of the NHRA during its championship at Auto Club Raceway, she had been scheduled to leave before the finals, depriving her of the chance to wish her friend and protégé, Erica Enders-Stevens, a last encouragement before her duel with Jason Line for the Pro Stock title.
"I got a text from my sister, Linda," Muldowney told espnW.com. "It said, 'Matt [Hagan] is the champ. Erica, too.'
"And I just sat down in the seat. I was just, 'Yeah, finally.'"
Thirty-two years had passed since Muldowney won her last of three NHRA Top Fuel championships. A trailblazing firebrand who cleared the field for a bevy of women now competing in the series, Muldowney, 74, wondered and lamented whether she would be the last woman to accomplish the feat, at least in a car. Although Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Angelle Sampey joined her in 2000 as the NHRA's only female champions to that point, also winning three titles, Muldowney said, "I respect Angelle, but motorcycles are two less wheels to worry about."
Enders-Stevens' championship, Muldowney said, validated all the work she had done.
"Thirty-two years of going, 'Well, I still have the bale on my back,'" Muldowney said. "What she did, for me, she proved that I wasn't a fluke."
Enders-Stevens did it on Sunday by blasting past Line, a three-time Pro Stock champion, as he committed a line foul, claiming her sixth win of the season and the championship. This was her first season with underfunded Elite Motorsports, and she won despite not entering two events because of travel costs.
Muldowney makes no secret that Enders-Stevens is her favorite among the current crop of women racing in the NHRA -- including Alexis DeJoria and Courtney and Brittany Force -- and she has offered advice and shared texts all season.
"She's just been a huge help and a huge inspiration," Enders-Stevens said.
That the 31-year-old Texan has met adversity with grit and grace has certainly endeared her to her hero. While Enders-Stevens never faced the misogyny Muldowney weathered and wore down in the 1970s, she has similarly struggled with funding and before this season lost her job when her race team merged with another and elevated her former crew chief and mentor, Dave Connolly, to the cockpit.
"It's a rich man's game, and Erica was able to do it without a rich man," Muldowney said. "I wish I could have done it the way she did it, but I couldn't. I was rolling in the dirt. It was ugly. I am very proud of the way she handled herself, mostly proud for her win and the way she accomplished it. The way she did it, and she was just masterful in the car."
Enders-Stevens represents the image Muldowney wishes female drivers would project both on and off the track.
"I just don't think we have any real material out there right now other than daddy's little girls where the stage is set for them, they have the best equipment that money can buy and wonderful people on their side making the decisions. They get in and line it up and point it and step on it," she said.
Muldowney reached Enders-Stevens by phone on Sunday night and hopes she can congratulate her in person soon. That may not happen until the NHRA schedule brings Enders-Stevens to the Charlotte area next year, though.
Muldowney can wait. She's confident Enders-Stevens will be just fine in her new role, with her, in elite motorsports company.
"Thank goodness," she said, "she's our woman world champion."