Drag Illustrated Issue 118, February 2017 | Page 76

TheHOTTEST2017
egan Meyer has been
surrounded by NHRA
Top Alcohol drag racing
for as long as she can
remember, so it was no
surprise when she made
her Top Alcohol Dragster competition debut at age 22 in 2015. Since
2003 world championship tuner Randy Meyer is her father, again, it
should have been no surprise when she went to the final round in her
debut outing. And finishing fourth in NHRA Lucas Oil series national
points in her first full year in competition? Again, no surprise. Truth
be told, the only surprise there, at least for Meyer, is that number not
being lower. ¶ Meyer started helping her father in the shop at an age
when most girls would rather play with Barbies and enter cheerlead-
ing competitions, not work on a clutch-dust-coated A/Fuel dragster.
She envisioned someday strapping into one of those 280-mph rock-
ets, maybe alongside her father, or even her younger sister, Rachel.
Randy never coaxed Megan or Rachel down that
career path, but he was eager to show them the
way when they began to show interest. The girls
began the process with Junior Dragster racing at
ages 10 and 8, respectively. Megan then moved up
to racing at Super Comp at local bracket races and
the occasional NHRA nationals and divisional
events. However, she wanted to go faster, and
she knew she would need to put in the additional
work required to compete in the sport’s quickest
and fastest sportsman category.
“I knew when I hopped into my Junior Dragster
that I would make my way up to Top Alcohol if
that’s what I really wanted,” Megan says. “I knew
I would have to work for it and I would have to
spend weekends and late nights in the shop at
home working on the cars – even if I would rather
be out hanging out with my friends. I didn’t ex-
pect anything to be handed to me. Even when we
started bracket racing, we had no experience with
that. My sister and I had to learn on our own, and
we built a strong relationship with our local tracks
from the families that I race with every weekend.
We’ve come a long way since those times.”
The insistence to learn at every step along the
way has paid dividends in Meyer’s quest to be-
come a Top Alcohol Dragster champion. The
foundations picked up in the Junior Dragster and
Super Comp ranks, along with accompanying her
father’s team to the starting line well before she
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D r a g Il l u s t r a t e d . c o m
would ever need to understand the process, gave
Meyer a distinct advantage over other rookies
who enter the class in hopes of landing a Top
Fuel ride.
“I had to learn along the way. Learning to have
patience, persistence and determination are all
lessons that I’ve learned on this journey that
have really helped me as a driver. I’ve had my
fair shares of wins and even more defeats, but I
believe the best place to really grasp the entire
operation is to be trackside on the starting line
and working in the pits as one of the crew guys.
If you can start out your career by working in the
shop and helping build the car that you’re going
to pilot, and the major thing is to be willing to
learn all the components of the race car, it just
helps elevate you to become the best driver there
is, and it all comes full circle. I’m just so thankful
for the childhood that my sister and I had and the
women that we’ve blossomed into today because
of those efforts,” Meyer says.
Having that mentality and the knowledge
of how the car works helped Meyer when she
made her first few passes towards getting her
Top Alcohol Dragster license. She was given the
opportunity to begin the licensing process in her
father’s car on the Monday following the 2013
NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida.
Even though the day’s testing efforts went well,
it would be another two years before Randy gave
Megan the go-ahead to make the final runs re-
quired to finish the licensing process.
“Patience was the major thing for me because
I tested for over two years until I actually got my
license,” Megan points out. “Yes, I could have got-
ten it on that first day that we tested at Gainesville
back in 2013, but that wasn’t really the way we
wanted to go about it. I told my dad I wanted
to graduate from college first. I wanted to get
a degree under my belt, and I went to college
with the purpose of racing in mind. The reason
why I went and got a graphic design degree was
because I knew I could apply what I learned in
graphics and bring it to the racetrack to help out
my team as well as other teams with their graph-
ics, marketing, social media and stuff like that.”
Once she became an officially licensed Top
Alcohol Dragster pilot, Meyer entered her first
race at the All-American Hot Rod Showdown
at Gateway Motorsports Park, an NHRA North