Roberta Leighton (drag racer)

Roberta Leighton was a pioneering American woman drag racer. She was the first woman licenced by the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to race in a Gas class.

History

Leighton started drag racing in 1952.^[1] Along with other family members, she was a member of the Dust Devils Car Club, who ran Inyokern Dragstrip in the high desert of Southern California.^[2]

Leighton, like fellow racers Carol Cox and Shirley Shahan, campaigned to allow women to compete equally with men. Leighton, in 1963, was the first woman licenced to compete in NHRA's Gas class.^[3]

Leighton's husband, Robert (commonly called Gus) served with a number of sanctioning bodies, including the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), and her sister, Phillys ("P.J."), married well-known racer and friend of NHRA founder Wally Parks Bernie Partridge (himself later NHRA Vice President), so Leighton was uniquely well placed to get changes made.^[4]

In 1962, Leighton won her class (J/Stock) at the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, in a 1960 Chevrolet El Camino.^[5] She later turned the Camino into an injected alky-burner.^[6]

Leighton suffered third degree burns in a 1963 house fire, keeping her out of racing until 1965; skin grafts by doctors at the NAWS China Lake hospital helped save her career.^[7]

She came back to sportsman class racing in 1965, and kept racing in competition classes until 1978, when she switched to bracket racing for twelve years.^[8]

In later years, she served as a track official, and helped run Inyokern Dragstrip.^[9]

She was good friends with fellow racer Shahan, and shared a sense of camaraderie with the other women racers, including Cox, Shirley Muldowney, Barbara Hamilton, and Paula Murphy.^[10]

Leighton died 15 November 2002.^[11]

Her son, David, still owns the 1960 J/S-winning Camino, which he hopes to put back on the strip some day.^[12]

Notes