Drag Illustrated Issue 118, February 2017 | Page 78

TheHOTTEST2017
HALLOWED GROUND
Florida’s historic Gainesville Raceway
provides the perfect backdrop for an
early-morning photoshoot. It’s also
where Meyer earned her Top Alcohol
Dragster license, made her national-
event debut, reached her first national-
event final round, and recorded one of
the top ten quickest runs in class history.
Central Region race filled with heavy hitters. She
used a consistent combination of quick lights and
thundering elapsed times to defeat class veterans
Robin Samsel and Marty Thacker before losing
a cylinder in the final round against the torque
converter-equipped blown dragster of Brandon
Booher.
“You have to look at it like you’re racing her dad,
or even a quicker-reacting version of her dad,”
Booher said at the time. “Randy is one of the best
there is at tuning an A/Fuel car and Megan is no
doubt proving herself as a driver. She’s going to
be a handful for a lot of people as she continues
to develop as a driver.”
Meyer followed up her late-round debut perfor-
mance with a semifi nal finish in front of her local
friends and family at Heartland Park Topeka’s
NHRA regional event just a few weeks after the
St. Louis debut.
“It was just awesome to go to Topeka and have
that same kind of success, make it to the semi-
finals. At both races, the way the ladder was set
up, I could have raced my dad, which was really
cool. We still haven’t had that opportunity yet,
but we’re still going to try for it.”
In December of 2015, a few months after her
competition debut, Meyer graduated from Kan-
sas’ Pittsburg State University with a degree in
Print & Web Design. She immediately put her
skills to use, developing marketing materials and
merchandise for her 2016 season, in which she
planned to run a full slate of national events and
regional races to contend for the NHRA Lucas Oil
Series national championship. Meyer also worked
with seasoned design professionals to design the
vinyl wrap and sublimated crew shirts that would
eventually garner the Best Appearing Car and
Best Appearing Crew awards later in the season.
Although 2016 was billed as Meyer’s rookie
season, she didn’t feel like the term “rookie” accu-
rately described her. Two years of testing and two
regional races gave her a chance to experience a
sample of everything Top Alcohol Dragster racing
has to offer – tire shake, tire smoke, dropped cyl-
inders, staging against two other combinations,
and everything in between – except the pressure
Dr ag Illustr ated
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D r a g Il l u s t r a t e d . c o m
of racing on the grand stage of an NHRA national
event. Meyer quickly moved past that challenge,
though, as she pulled onto the history Gaines-
ville Raceway quarter mile for the 2016 NHRA
Gatornationals.
“Having that experience really helped set up
2016 to be a great season because I had those first-
run jitters out of the way. I wasn’t as nervous as
I was in 2015,” Meyer remembers. “Even though
Gainesville was a national race, I still had those
six or seven rounds of eliminations in my pocket,
and so I knew what to expect. Within those few
races, I lined up against the three different types
of setups in our class – A/Fuel, blown cars and
the converter cars. I had all this experience going
into 2016 so I wasn’t that much of a newbie to it.”
Meyer made an immediate splash when she
came close to sweeping the event, just a few
numbers away from qualifying number one and
winning the event. Her best friend, “Miss Mia”
Tedesco, nabbed the number-one spot with a
5.215 over Meyer’s 5.224, and A/Fuel veteran Rich
McPhillips denied Megan her first event win with