Drag racing star Ida Zetterström: ‘They told me I was the fastest woman … it bugged me’

When drag racer Ida Zetterström discusses her craft, she describes her racing decisions as a series of thoughtful if/then statements. This is misleading. The time in which she can alter her actions is best measured in tenths of seconds. There’s no time for thinking – it’s all muscle memory perfected over decades in the cockpit. A slight miscalculation can leave her car spinning without traction at the starting line, or worse.

“When it comes to the actual run, I should be 100% wide open [on the gas],” she says. “I should never have to [re-adjust] the throttle or anything like that because, if you do that – first of all, the run is not going to be good. You will never, ever have a good run. Plus, the risk of blowing the engine up is super, super high.”

Fortunately, when her wheels lose traction at the start of her second qualifying run at the Carolina Nationals in Charlotte, North Carolina, Zetterström is able to prevent the car from suffering any significant damage. Flirting with this frontier between success and failure is necessary – the margins of victory in drag racing are ultra-slim.

“It’s a very thin line between smoking the tires, shaking the tires, and a perfect run,” Zetterström says. In her estimation, nearly all of her greatest races have flirted with failure before ultimately leading to her fastest runs. Although only four races into her American drag racing career, Zetterström’s observations are informed by experience. Originally from Sweden, she has already achieved everything she wanted in European drag racing.

To call Zetterström the 2023 European drag racing champion is simultaneously accurate and an understatement. She didn’t eke out a close-fought victory over her competition – she dominated them. Zetterström lost in an elimination round just once in the entire season. Moreover, she broke the European record for the fastest race time. With nothing left to prove in Europe, earlier this year she headed westward.

Related: The gloves are off, but can bare-knuckle boxing hit the mainstream?

“It’s always been my goal to come over here,” she says of the US. “I’ve been working toward this for many, many years … This is where the sport is the biggest. The competition is the hardest, the fields are the biggest, the cars are the quickest, the tracks are the best.”

USA’s National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), in which Zetterström competes, organizes championships in four professional racing categories: Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle. Somewhat confusingly, both Top Fuel and Funny Car share the distinction of being considered the sport’s premier competition. Top Fuel dragsters look more extreme to the untrained eye – shaped like long darts with tail-end spoilers that tower over most people, Top Fuel dimensions seem ideal for piercing through wind resistance. Funny Cars, alternatively, look a bit – well, like funnily proportioned factory cars. Their contrasting aesthetics, however, hide the fact that, under their fibreglass bodies, the two categories operate similar machinery and both can reach speeds of 330mph. It ultimately comes down to drivers’ (and fans’) personal preference – Zetterström competes in the NHRA’s Top Fuel class (the same class in which she raced in Europe).

Drag racing’s fanbase is inarguably smaller than that of other motorsports. It is therefore tempting to assume that the NHRA serves as a sort of ‘minor league’ for drivers with the eventual ambition of racing in Nascar or Formula One. This is inaccurate. Drag racing is more like an alternate realm that has always been present within the larger world of motorsport. Entering the grounds of the Carolina Nationals does feel remarkably like walking into a speakeasy. One leaves behind an otherwise anonymous American suburb and enters a subculture in which many of the families present have participated for generations.

This family-first element of drag racing is difficult to ignore. While Nascar races can feel like booze-fuelled music festivals, an NHRA event has the wholesome vibe of a state fair. This impression is exacerbated by the NHRA’s calculated openness – fans are encouraged to examine cars up close and meet the drivers. Such ‘pit tours’ are available to all ticketholders – similar experiences can cost hundreds of dollars in other racing formats. The sport’s familial vibe extends to its drivers. Like many of her peers in the NHRA, Zetterström grew up around motorsport.

“My parents were always in racing,” she says. “My dad didn’t always race himself, but he worked with teams and he built engines.” Zetterström herself began competing in junior races when she was eight years old. Despite her early start, however, Zetterström’s journey to Top Fuel racing wasn’t straightforward. In fact, it required a multi-year detour as a European champion motorcycle racer, where she was a pioneer for female inclusion.

“There had never been a woman raising the bar and setting new records and making waves [in her European motorcycle class] … Everybody talked about it all the time.” It was a role she didn’t relish, at least not at first.

“It started to come to a point where it annoyed me,” she says of the focus on her gender. “When I won the championship, I was also the youngest to ever win a championship in that class and, for me, that was even cooler … They told me I was the fastest woman, but I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I’m the second-fastest [man or woman] ever.’ So, for me, it bugged me.”

The knock-on effects of her success, however, eventually eased Zetterström’s stance.

“When I started seeing other women come up to me and being like, ‘Hey, I’m trying to get into the class, too. I’m started to race bikes,’ [then] I was like, ‘OK, it wasn’t important for me, but it might have important for others.’”

She now embraces her position as role model for other female riders. Zetterström is still the holder of the women’s European record for Super Street Bike drag racing, and she wants those who have followed her to break the mark.

“It’s stood there since 2020,” she says, with a hint of incredulity. “It’s four years old now – go get it! That’s what we want, to push it forward.”

Zetterström will be less of a pioneer in NHRA. Top Fuel drag racing has a long history of not only female drivers, but female champions. In the 1980s, American Shirley Muldowney became the first driver (man or woman) to win three NHRA Top Fuel titles, and Finland’s Anita Mäkelä won three European Top Fuel titles of her own in the 2010s. As a result, Zetterström appreciated the lack of “first female” pressure that accompanied her transition from motorcycle to Top Fuel racing.

“When I came into Top Fuel, there was so many women that have done it before me. So, it’s like, if they can do it, I can do it,” she says. “For the guys, a lot of them might have been in drag racing for many years, and they know there’s nothing strange with women here.”

Zetterström credits Top Fuel’s tendency toward inclusivity in its junior ranks for the high number of female champions at the sport’s highest level.

“[Top Fuel] never separates women from men, even at a young age. When you start racing when you’re eight – in that class you can be from eight to eighteen – men and women are always racing together. So, for me, it was never strange to race a guy. It was never strange for the guys to race a girl. I think the whole, mental aspect is [such] that you never make it strange.”

The 2024 NHRA circuit is spoilt for previous champions, male and female – five are competing alongside Zetterström in the Top Fuel division at the Carolina Nationals this weekend. Two-time champion Brittney Force, in particular, seems poised for a rivalry with Zetterström. Among other reasons, Force, like Zetterström, is her continent’s current record holder in Top Fuel racing. Zetterström laughs at the suggestion that she and Force are destined for enmity.

“It’s very easy to look at a paper and say, ‘They should be rivals’ but I think it’s more about mindset,” she says. “You can tell if they like you or not.”

Zetterström’s transatlantic move seems to have a broadly popular appeal with the public. Fan numbers don’t lie. Still just a month into her NHRA career, the crowd of autograph-seekers waiting for Zetterström is second only to Tony Stewart, the Nascar Hall-of-Famer currently racing his wife’s Top Fuel car while she’s on maternity leave. While speaking with the Guardian, Zetterström’s team bring her multiple additional items to autograph.

Unfortunately for Zetterström, popularity can’t translate into a championship this year. She only announced her intention of joining the NHRA in December 2023 and she’s spent most of 2024 organizing her team and equipment. By the time she started racing in August, her opponents already had a 13-race head start in the points standings. Still, should she win an event between now and the season’s end in November, she has a chance to win the rookie of the year award. Zetterström doesn’t need to win everything right away anyway. Despite her wandering motorsports career thus far, she says she’s in the NHRA to stay.

“The dream has always been to come over here and race, but not just come over here ‘and race.’ The dream has been to come over here and win races, and be the best, and win championships,” she says. “My list doesn’t say ‘Win a championship and retire.’ The plan is a lot longer than that.”

Even if she gets bored of Top Fuel, Zetterström says she could transition to racing Funny Cars in the NHRA, although not anytime soon.

“If I’m driving Funny Car, that’s because I’m done with Top Fuel,” she says, and “I am so not done with Top Fuel, I’m just scraping the surface … There’s still so much left to do.”