Ever since Mendy Fry was a kid, her ultimate goal was to earn a place in drag racing history.

In a rain-delayed Nostalgia Top Fuel final at the Good Vibrations March Meet, her dream came true.

Fry, who qualified No. 8 in the eight-car front-engine dragster field, was a giant-killer throughout eliminations taking out the top two qualifiers en route to her first career Top Fuel victory. Truth be known, she performed like a giant with 5.5-second performances.

Fry becomes the third female Top Fuel winner at the historic drag race joining the likes of Shirley Muldowney and Lucille Lee, who met in the 1982 final round.

"I’ll take it," Lee said. "I’ll take my place in history. I really find it as being my lifelong achievement to this point. When I came back to racing in 2000 and got a ride in A/Fuel, and then started lobbying for a Top Fuel ride, it’s like I’ve shown that I will do anything that it takes, right?

"I mean I worked on cars, I’ll drive cars that are underfunded, whatever I can do to stay in the mix to be able to get this opportunity is what I’ve done. And I can’t believe my fortune in being given this opportunity."

Fry was named as driver of the heralded High Speed Motorsports entry for this season

"I’m so happy that High Speed picked me," Fru said. "They had their choice [of drivers], and they picked me, and I just want to be able to deliver what this amazing team is capable of. I need to bring game to match it."

Fry showed her A-game from the time eliminations opened Sunday afternoon by taking out the biggest brawler in the nitro bar in No. 1 Tony Bartone.

While it might appear Fry struggled to get into the field at No. 8, her first round triumph over Bartone showed their hand in the high horsepower card game.

Fry unleashed a 5.597 elapsed time to send defending series champion Bartone packing, as he double-clutched at the green, and followed the miscue by crossing the centerline. The run was two-tenths quicker than she'd ever run before.

Fry pedaled the car in the second round to advance to the finals with a 5.783, 220 over rookie Pete Wittenburg in the Circuit Breaker dragster.

The final round proved to be anticlimactic as Fry singled for the win when Murphy's dragster suffered a broken fuel pump drive. However, there was nothing disappointing about her 5.59-second elapsed time at 252 miles per hour exclamation point to finish a weekend story which started with a bad introduction.

During Thursday pre-event testing, the High Speed dragster's input shaft broke on the hit and grenaded the clutch. The Trick Titanium bell housing safely contained the havoc, but the disintegrated clutch left the team working night into morning. Despite the setback, Fry and her team managed a spot in the show.

Fry is a fighter and has worked her way up the ladder from humble beginnings as a Jr. Fuel racer to racing Top Fuel underfunded and even taking a job driving an AA/FC.

Most every drag racer has a dream to fulfill when they begin driving, on Monday before a sparsely filled grandstand of diehard drag racing fans; Fry achieved what she dreamed would inevitably be her destiny.

"I had a fan ask me, and we were talking about having got to this point, and we were also talking about the big show, and he asked me, ‘Where do you go from here?" Fry recalled, "And I looked at him and said, ‘So you mean the next race or do you mean like philosophically?"

"And he’s like, ‘No, like you’re this far now, what’s your next step?" "I’m just looking at him, and I go, ‘I’m here. This was the step. This is what I’ve been working for. This is what I want. This is everything I want; there is no next step. This is the one."

Fry's one place in drag racing history, this is the next step she envisioned.