IHRA: 'Bunny' Burkett given unique tribute

We've all complained about race track food – the price, the quality, the distance from the grandstands and the fact that whenever you dash to the food booth to grab a hamburger, somebody makes a record-setting run on the track.

Except for that last issue, Maryland International Raceway has you covered, and they do it in a neat way: The Hot Rodz diner is a tribute to pioneer female racer Bunny Burkett, and there's even a full-sized Funny Car of hers sitting on the roof.

Carol "Bunny" Burkett has always credited Shirley Muldowney as the woman who really opened the door for female drag racers, but Burkett was one of the first through that door, and she held it open for others.

Born in nearby West Virginia, Burkett began racing at her local tracks, including Maryland International Raceway, but she needed a job to help finance it. She found one in Baltimore at the Playboy Club, where she was a hostess. When she came back to the track, it was with a new car and a new nickname – Bunny, of course.

In the 1980s, Burkett went all in with drag racing, turning pro and making a name for herself, particularly in Alcohol Funny Car. In 1986, she won the first IHRA Alcohol Funny Car Championship.

She became, overnight, the First Lady of Funny cars. With the (deserved) nickname, the bright pink cars, a winning personality and a championship on her résumé, Burkett was by any measure a pioneer in the field.

Still, "I try not to think of it that way," she said.

"I know a lot of people do think of it and it is no secret that I have acquired the title of the Second Lady of Drag Racing and the First Lady of Funny Car, but Shirley [Muldowney] made the path and it was pretty narrow," Burkett said. "All I did was help widen it."

It was not all roses and winner's circles for Burkett, though. On September 4, 1995, at a track in Pennsylvania that had no guardrails except near the starting line, another car crossed the center line and hit Burkett, sending her on a wild ride through a cornfield and plowing into the woods, where her Dodge Avenger overturned.

She was helicoptered to the hospital, where, she said, she actually died three times, but the paramedics were able to bring her back. She had head injuries, a broken back and broken legs. She was in a coma for weeks, in the hospital for two months.

She came back in 1997, though, in another Dodge Avenger – all that was salvageable from the last car were the parachute packs, she said – and ran a 6.43 her first time out. Bunny was back, and her fans were delighted.

And, at 71, she still refuses to use the word "retirement." From the biography on her website, BunnyBurkett.com: "I have died, had breast cancer, a mastectomy, hysterectomy, I have fell and broke my leg, had a hip replacement, had another form of cancer, but every single time all I could think of is getting back in that car," she wrote. "I had commitments and I had my fans. I mean they just get in a tizzy when I am not out here."