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There's one arena of motor sport where everyone's a hero. One where the skill is not in the deftness of steering, nor the late application of brakes. Nor that intuitive feel for a car's limits, nor the pre-emption of an opponent's mistake. This a sport where the real display of talent, the thing that separates man from boy, is just turning up on race day.

Drag racing is not something that makes much sense in the UK. But that's because we don't sire nutjobs like Don 'Big Daddy' Garlits. Born in Florida in 1932, Don is the undisputed godfather of the world's fastest accelerating sport.

In 1955 Garlits won the first organised drag race he ever entered, with the first car he ever built. He was the first driver to officially surpass 170, 180, 200, 240, 250, 260 and 270mph on 1/4 mile strip, and the first to hit 200mph in 1/8th of a mile. In 1970, his front-engined, rear-cockpit dragster suffered what has been described as 'catastrophic clutch failure'.

A large portion of the transmission exploded, cutting the car in half and taking much of Garlits' right foot with it. Mildly irritated, he set about pioneering the rear-engined, front cockpit design that became standard in Top Fuel racing within two years.

Garlits won a total of 144 national events, the last at the age of 54. In 1987 his home-built dragster Swamp Rat XXX (top right) was enshrined in the Smithsonian Museum alongside the aircraft Spirit of St Louis and NASA's first manned space capsule.

He's endured some other spectacular crashes, including two 'blowovers' where wheelies resulted in the car flipping through 180 degrees. But he was only forced into retirement in his seventies by a detached retina, the result of 4g-plus decelerations caused by his dragster's braking parachute.

In '94 Garlits ran for Congress. It's fair to say his was a fairly right-wing ticket including a call for medieval prisons, public beatings of the young; and don't get him started on gays. Even in the US, he lost. You can't win them all, Don.