To kick off her official return to drag racing competing in the inaugural Nitro Chaos championship series, Megan took the top qualifying spot and finished in the semifinals at Edgewater Sports Park near Cincinnati, OH last weekend in her Randy Meyer Racing-owned, Gunk-sponsored nitro dragster.
Megan’s father, Randy, had his other two Top Alcohol Dragsters in Indianapolis that same weekend for the NHRA Lucas Oil Regional race, so he split up the team and sent Megan’s little sister, Rachel Meyer, with her to be the crew chief. Randy was there to assist with tuning on Friday during their two qualifying runs where the Gunk dragster ran a 3.69 ET at 215 mph in the eighth-mile and a 3.67 ET at 217 mph. During qualifying, Megan was called-out by the “BushWacker” team who won with a 3.61 ET.
However, during the last chance qualifying session the following day, Rachel tuned Megan to a 3.50 ET at 228 mph to take the number 1 qualifying spot and be ahead of the field by more than a tenth of a second. There were 16 cars entered for the one-class race that were then split in half with the top 8 as the A field and second 8 as the B field. Megan was paired up against #8 qualifier, Eric Stevens in the “Bluegrass Thunder” funny car, for first round and won with a 3.64 ET at 215 mph. Moving onto the semifinals, Megan was matched up against Tyler Hilton in the “Great Expectations” front-engine dragster. Unfortunately Megan was too anxious and did a two-step before the green light and was disqualified.
“I am so disappointed in myself for redlighting,” Megan claimed. “I know better than to do that, but I got distracted before the run started and wasn’t in the zone. I know this car has the potential to win another championship, and my crew proved that in qualifying. But I need to get back into the mindset of a champion and after 2 years off, this was a good reminder that it doesn’t come easy.
“My little sister did a fantastic job of tuning the Gunk dragster which was a dream we’ve had since we were little girls. I can’t thank my family and crew for putting together a makeshift operation for this race and supporting me to chase a new goal. We had a blast at Edgewater and are looking forward to returning next year in the Gunk dragster.”
Megan won the second Nitro Chaos exhibition race in 2022 at Mo-Kan Dragway, and it planted the seed to make a full-time appearance in the championship series, “When I decided to retire from NHRA, I had no desires of getting back behind the wheel,” said Megan. “But at that time the Nitro Chaos hadn’t existed yet. Once I learned about the outlaw-style of drag racing that is close to my home, it was a no brainer to give it a shot and see if I still have what it takes to drive these 4,000 horsepower nitro machines. When I did the Mo-Kan race, I was hooked. This style of racing is so much fun and it’s the coolest thing ever to get to race against front-engine dragsters, funny cars, and altereds. I couldn’t have asked for a better series to make me want to come back to drag racing.”
Megan’s next Nitro Chaos race will be at Eddyville Raceway Park in Iowa on Memorial Day Weekend, where Rachel will also be behind the wheel of the Randy Meyer Racing Team’s other dragster with support from Gunk, and teammate Julie Nataas will return to the Funny Car for an action-packed weekend!
