PRI Hall of Fame 2026: Ed Pink, Shirley Kear Valentine

Every trophy in racing has a hidden credit line. Somebody bored the cylinders, somebody shipped the torsion bars overnight, somebody answered the phone at 10 p.m. when a team blew its last spare before the feature. The Performance Racing Industry Hall of Fame exists to read those credit lines out loud, and its 2026 class picks two of the best examples the sport has: a California engine builder whose work won in almost every American discipline that burns fuel, and an Ohio speed shop owner who spent decades keeping sprint car racers on track.

PRI announced on Oct. 12 that the late engine builder Ed Pink and sprint car parts pioneer Shirley Kear Valentine will be inducted at the Grand Opening Breakfast on Thursday, Dec. 10, at the Indiana Convention Center, opening day of the 2026 PRI Show in Indianapolis (Dec. 10–12). Pink died on April 27, 2025, at 94; his widow, Sylvia Pink, will accept on the family’s behalf.

PRI managing director Doug Bresnahan framed the pairing as “two essential parts of the racing industry: technical innovation and an enduring commitment to helping racers compete and succeed.” That is about as neat a summary of the parts business as you will get from an official release.

What the PRI Hall of Fame actually honors

PRI launched the Hall of Fame in 2024 to honor what it called the “difference-makers in the motorsports industry.” Note the last word. This is not a drivers’ hall. The published criteria ask for contributions at a national or international level, at least 10 years in motorsports or with PRI (15-plus preferred), outstanding contributions to the technology, professionalism or growth of the industry, and a record of integrity. A PRI-appointed committee votes.

The roll so far tells you who that committee thinks built the business. The 2024 inaugural class was camshaft king Ed “Isky” Iskenderian and PRI founder Steve Lewis. The 2025 class added Paul “Scooter” Brothers of COMP Performance Group, longtime PRI editor and executive John Kilroy, and ARP’s Chris Raschke, the Bonneville racer killed in a land speed attempt in August 2025. Pink and Kear Valentine bring the total to seven, and the theme holds: the people who made the parts, sold the parts, or built the marketplace where the parts change hands.

Ed Pink: the engine builder who outgrew every category

PRI’s release says Pink founded Ed Pink Racing Engines in 1958 (the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America dates the shop to 1961; the official sources disagree). He came up through land speed and drag racing, worked on Ford’s 427 SOHC drag racing engine program, and, by PRI’s count, built engines that won more than 100 races and over 10 national championships across Top Fuel, Funny Car, IMSA, Indy car and USAC. PRI’s 2025 obituary notes the business moved to Van Nuys, California, in 1965 and was sold to vintage racer and collector Tom Malloy in 2008.

The Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, which inducted him in 2012, fills in the resume. Its biography credits Pink engines with helping Don Prudhomme, Raymond Beadle and Shirley Muldowney to NHRA world titles, and with Ed McCulloch’s 1980 NHRA Nationals Funny Car win. It then follows him into a completely different world: working with Cosworth from 1980 on the turbocharged DFX that ran in Indy cars, sports car programs including Jim Busby’s Porsche 962, Nissan/Infiniti’s Indy V8 from 1996 to 2001, and Ford, Mopar and Toyota engines for USAC midgets and Silver Crown cars.

That range is the point. A 2,500-hp nitro Hemi, a turbocharged methanol Indy V8 and a USAC midget engine share almost nothing except the need for someone who understands combustion, airflow and failure modes better than the rulebook does. The nickname “The Old Master” was earned by being right across all of them.

Shirley Kear Valentine: the supply line sprint cars run on

Kear Valentine and her late husband, Chuck, co-founded Kear’s Speed Shop in 1969. PRI describes it as a nationally recognized supplier to the sprint car community, built partly by the family traveling to tracks around the country. A profile from the Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership places the shop in downtown Tiffin, Ohio, and notes the Kears also organized the Fremont Racers’ Flea Market, manufacturer nights at Fremont, and the Chuck Kear Memorial race. In that same profile she recalled that women were barred from pit areas when the family started traveling, a reminder that motorsport’s gatekeeping problem is older than most of its current fans.

In 2016 the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inducted her in its owners, mechanics, builders and manufacturers category. PRI’s release notes she was only the fourth woman and the first supplier honored there.

“I’m honored to be included in the PRI Hall of Fame,” Kear Valentine said in PRI’s announcement. “Racing has been such an important part of my life.”

Why fans should care about the parts business

Weekly short-track racing is a consumables sport. Sprint cars eat torsion bars, wings, front axles, wheels and driveline parts at a rate that would alarm a Cup team accountant, and the racers buying them are mostly funding it themselves. The supplier who shows up at the track with the right spares, or ships them before Friday night, decides how many cars make the field. A car count is a parts-supply number before it is anything else.

The engine-builder side matters for different reasons. Independent builders like Pink were how technology moved between disciplines; drag racing, sports car and Indy car lessons traveled in the same shop. Trust matters too, which is why sanctioning bodies treat certification paperwork seriously; see NHRA’s recent counterfeit chassis tag suspension. And the sprint car world keeps proving its reach upward: Kasey Kahne’s latest NASCAR comeback started at Knoxville.

What to watch in Indianapolis

The induction: Thursday, Dec. 10, at the Grand Opening Breakfast inside the Indiana Convention Center.
The show: PRI says more than 1,000 exhibitors across the convention center and Lucas Oil Stadium, Dec. 10–12, and PRI membership is no longer required to attend.
The pattern: three classes in, the Hall has honored engine, valvetrain, fastener and retail people plus PRI’s own builders. Chassis constructors and tire people are the obvious gaps.

Bresnahan’s line was about “the people who make it possible.” For once, that’s not a platitude. Ed Pink and Shirley Kear Valentine made it possible for thousands of racers to show up with something that ran.