At one of the oldest drag strips in the country, Karen Stalba has spent 20-plus years running alcohol dragsters, cars fast enough to leave muscle cars in the dust. This weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Series brought 450-plus cars to historic Atco Dragway, a track with a record-setting past dating back to the 1960s. Here’s what made this South Jersey race weekend stand out.
Featuring a quarter-mile of non-stop thrills, the Atco Dragway has satisfied South Jersey’s need for speed for more than half a century.
This weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series is sure to be one of the biggest events of the summer with more than 450 cars lined up.
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“It’s all good but the alcohol cars tomorrow is going to be where it’s at,†says Atco race director DJ Balducci. Named for the fuel they use, alcohol cars are among the fastest race cars in the world. At 5 seconds down the track they’ll beat just about any muscle car, but you don’t have to be masculine to go fast.
“I’ve been 270 mph hour in this car,†says Karen Stalba who has been racing alcohol dragsters for more than 20 years.
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Karen Stalba doesn’t look like most people’s idea of a 270 mph racer, and that’s exactly the point. At Atco Dragway, one of the oldest quarter-mile strips in the country, she’s spent more than two decades piloting an alcohol dragster, a class of car built to outrun nearly everything else on the property, muscle cars included. The weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series brought more than 450 cars to the historic South Jersey track, but the buzz wasn’t just about the field size. It was about what happens when a fuel class built for speed meets a track that’s been hosting record runs since the 1960s.
A Track With Nearly Six Decades of History
Atco Dragway opened in Waterford Township, New Jersey, on May 30, 1960, making it the oldest drag strip in the state at the time of this event. The track built a reputation as one of the busiest in the country, at one point hosting more than 265 events in a single year, and it saw its own brush with drag racing’s biggest names — Don Garlits ripped off an eye-opening 197 mph pass at Atco in August 1964, the same white-hot summer he’d go on to become the first man past 200 mph a few miles up the road at Island Dragway. That pedigree is part of why an event like the Lucas Oil Series carried extra weight at Atco: drivers weren’t just racing each other, they were racing on ground that had already seen decades of NHRA history.
Why Alcohol Cars Steal the Show
Named for the fuel that powers them, alcohol dragsters are among the fastest cars in drag racing, capable of covering the quarter-mile in around five seconds. That puts them well ahead of even the quickest muscle cars on the property, and it’s why Atco’s race director singled out the alcohol class as the weekend’s main draw. Stalba’s presence in that field, and her two decades of experience running these cars, underscored a point drag racing has made for years: at this level, raw speed doesn’t care about assumptions.
Women Blazing the Trail Before Her
Stalba’s two decades behind the wheel of an alcohol dragster follow a path first cleared by Shirley Muldowney, who earned her NHRA Top Fuel license in 1973 and went on to win three NHRA Top Fuel championships in 1977, 1980, and 1982 — the first driver, male or female, to win multiple Top Fuel titles. That history is exactly why a race director singling out the alcohol class as a weekend’s main draw regardless of who’s behind the wheel isn’t remarkable in drag racing the way it might be in other motorsports — the sport’s fastest categories have never been defined by gender, only by elapsed time.
What Makes an Alcohol Dragster Different
Alcohol-fueled dragsters and funny cars sit directly below Top Fuel in the NHRA’s national event hierarchy, running methanol rather than nitromethane, which produces slightly lower outright power but far more consistent, repeatable runs — part of why the class is popular with touring series like the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series that need reliable, competitive fields at dozens of tracks across a season.
A Touring Series Built for Grassroots Fans
The NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series is built specifically around sportsman-level competition rather than the pro categories fans see on national television, giving racers like Stalba a full season of regional events rather than a handful of marquee national events. That structure is exactly why a single weekend at a track like Atco can draw more than 450 entries — it’s a series built on volume and access, not a small handful of factory-backed teams.
A Track That Keeps Adapting
Half a century after Don Garlits set records there, Atco Dragway has stayed relevant by continuing to host NHRA-sanctioned touring events rather than fading into nostalgia, adapting its schedule to fit modern series like the Lucas Oil circuit while still trading on the same quarter-mile strip that made its name. Few drag strips from the sport’s earliest era are still running sanctioned national-affiliate events today, which makes Atco’s continued place on the calendar as much a story as anything happening on the track that weekend.
A Family Sport at the Grassroots Level
Unlike NHRA’s nationally televised professional categories, sportsman-class alcohol racing at events like this one is largely self-funded, with racers like Stalba covering travel, fuel, and maintenance costs out of pocket rather than drawing major sponsorship money. That grassroots reality is part of what makes two decades of continuous competition genuinely remarkable — staying in the sport that long takes commitment that has little to do with prize money.
Why Local News Cameras Show Up
A story like Stalba’s checks every box a local television crew looks for: a hometown athlete, a genuinely surprising skillset, and a hook — “270 miles an hour” — that translates instantly to viewers who’ve never set foot at a drag strip. That kind of crossover coverage has quietly done more to introduce casual audiences to drag racing over the decades than most of the sport’s own marketing ever has.
A Single Sentence That Says It All
“I’ve been 270 miles an hour in this car” is the kind of line that needs no follow-up question, and it’s exactly why a brief television interview clip like this one keeps circulating years after it originally aired.
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