With her victory in the O’Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, Melanie Troxel became the first woman to win in Funny Car and Top Fuel.
“I think your first pro win is always going to be the biggest, but this ranks right up there,” Troxel said. “I remember my first win in the Alcohol class, my first in Top Fuel and now this.”
“I’ve never liked to judge myself against only the female [drivers],” Troxel said. “ I think it’s silly for Ashley [Force] and I to worry about which one of us is better. I’d like to set my bar by competing against everybody, not the just the males or females.”
Few drag racing fans will forget Sunday’s marathon session at Thunder Valley, which featured seven rain delays.
“That can kind of mess with your head, but I just tried to laugh it off,” Troxel said. “I think I did three burnouts before the first round, was in my fire suit six times, and got strapped in the car four or five times. It was a long day, but a great day.”
Troxel said she was concentrating too much on her elimination runs and dealing with intermittent rain at Bristol Dragway to give much thought to history.
“That’s kind of like icing on the cake,” she said. “I haven’t given that any thought. We were so focused on going out there and getting some round wins and getting a [race] win.”
With her victory, she joined 13 other drivers who have won in both funny cars and top-fuel dragsters—her husband among them.
Johnson said that when Troxel switched to the funny car ranks this year, he “wasn’t the biggest fan of it right away” because of the “added pressure” of racing against his wife.
“But I knew there was a point in time when she wanted to run funny car,” Johnson said
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