If any season in NHRA history could be nicknamed “The Year of the Women,” this should be the one.

Alexis DeJoria and Courtney Force in Funny Car, Erica Enders-Stevens in Pro Stock, and Angie Smith in Pro Stock Motorcycle have won races. Brittany Force has led the Top Fuel field and scored a runner-up finish. The Mello Yello Drag Racing Series has had female winners, top qualifiers, and racers with low elapsed time and top speed at all but one of the 11 events completed so far. Only at the schedule-opening Winternationals did the women blank on the tote board.

If any season in NHRA history could be nicknamed “The Year of the Women,” this should be the one.

Alexis DeJoria and Courtney Force in Funny Car, Erica Enders-Stevens in Pro Stock, and Angie Smith in Pro Stock Motorcycle have won races. Brittany Force has led the Top Fuel field and scored a runner-up finish. The Mello Yello Drag Racing Series has had female winners, top qualifiers, and racers with low elapsed time and top speed at all but one of the 11 events completed so far. Only at the schedule-opening Winternationals did the women blank on the tote board.

But they and Top Fuel racer Leah Pritchett and Pro Stock Bike racers Katie Sullivan and Dawn Minturn aren’t the only pro drag-racing women in the spotlight.

Lizzy Musi is making a name for herself in the PDRA Pro Nitrous Pro Modified class after stepping up from the Top Sportsman ranks in the now-defunct ADRL. Already her move has opened eyes as she took over in the seat of the Jerry Bickel-built Dodge Stratus that Curacao's Frank Brandao owns. It’s the King Kong 5 entry that her father, eight-time Pro Street champion Pat Musi, made popular.

At the Spring Open this April at Rockingham, N.C. – her Pro Nitrous premiere and the PDRA’s, as well – Lizzy Musi qualified second and became the first woman to run 200 mph in eighth-mile Pro Modified racing on her way to a semifinal finish.

Musi is back in action this weekend in the Summer Drags at U.S. 131 Motorsports Park at Martin, Mich. Since her debut, she has struggled against a mechanical problem that she and her team finally sorted out. She said that glitch, which turned out to be a case of the wrong transmission oil, “ended up costing us two races. We kept thinking it was this, that, this, and that We changed so much stuff. From being so worked up about that, I’m ready to just rip up the track.”

So Pro Nitrous fans are eager to see what Musi will run, especially after a 3.790-second pass, despite the transmission trouble, in May at the Georgia Drags at Valdosta. She’s already been a media sensation following her crazy-scary Top Sportsman accident at Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway but wants to be one again, this time for the right reasons.

Musi said she’d rather be noticed for her performance than her gender or her pedigree or a crash that seems so far back in time that the statute of limitations should forbid any comparison to her driving now.

She said she hasn’t become acquainted yet with the Force sisters but would like to: “Absolutely. It’s important that we all stick together. There's not too many out there.”

The story of Yorba Linda, California’s Force sisters, including currently sidelined young mother Ashley Force Hood, is far better documented. They’ve had a reality-TV show that is set for a revival. They have a famous father whose storytelling and antics are as legendary as his NHRA-best 139 victories and 16 championships. They have high-priced, well-connected Hollywood publicity agents scurrying to pitch their personalities to the media.

But on the East Coast, a father-daughter racing story has evolved with less fanfare but equal personality and passion for the sport. Lizzy Musi’s chronicle of learning from a dad with abundant experience and a proud reputation for being entangled in as much mayhem along the way almost mirrors that of the Force women.

But 23-year-old Musi has the benefit of -- and shrugs off any perceived baggage by – being a daughter of Pat Musi – the decorated outlaw doorslammer icon who has eight Pro Street class championships and has built a globally respected engine-building operation. She, too, has a sister, 22-year-old Tricia, who’s crazy about racing and is expected to enter the PDRA mix one day soon.

Lizzy Musi happened to be testing this preseason at the same Jupiter, Fla., racetrack at the same time as Courtney and Brittany Force. Their paths never crossed, and Musi is carving out her own path in drag racing. She’s operating in a parallel universe, of sorts, with the NHRA women, who also have risen through the sportsman ranks.

Nevertheless, she said she certainly can relate to the Force sisters. She’s perhaps most like Courtney Force, with her lifelong desire to follow in her dad’s huge footsteps, her ready smile and easy laugh, and her ease with the media. Maybe the two are mirror images, Force with her blonde, Southern California beach-girl look and toothpaste-advertisement-white smile and Musi with her dark locks, beaming smile, and equally exotic style that’s part New Jersey Italian and Swedish. But Force would echo Musi’s sentiment about drag racing: “I'm up for anything. I love going fast. That's the main thing." (Musi’s mother raced a Corvette in her native Sweden, so she has impossible-to-shake racing genes.)

Certainly Musi and the Force girls could fill a lunchtime meeting with stories about their caution-to-the-wind dads and their approaches to tutoring their daughters.

Any chaos for Lizzy as she learned from Dad?

“Ohhh yeah . . .” she said, as if to add, “You have no idea and I don’t have enough hours in the day to educate you!” With a bit of a giggle, Musi said, "It's a little tough here and there sometimes, working with your dad. My dad's a little . . . he can be on edge sometimes. But I always have a good time at the races. At the track he's always on his game. And I can't thank him enough. He's always supportive, and I'm lucky to have him as a dad. I couldn’t be more grateful.”

She’s almost more stumped about how to describe her father’s style or single out an example of how non-traditional their shtick at the racetrack is.

“Oh, I don’t even want to [go there],” she said, laughing but keeping the specifics to herself.

“He gets a little overwhelmed sometimes, and I can tell we understand each other,” Musi said.

“It's just him and me on the radio most of the time. And I'm rolling in the beams – I'm just about to roll into the second one -- and he's like, 'C'mon, Lizzy. C'mon. Hurry up.' The radio gets pretty intense sometimes. But it's all right – it goes in one ear and out the other. We have our moments, but we get through 'em. The radio's a pretty funny deal. He's like, 'Are you in your car yet? Are you ready to go?' He gets all riled up. But I can understand it from his point of view."

Informed that the Force ladies have experienced that exponentially, Musi said, "Really? Serious? So I'm not the only one! That's a good thing!"

She said she can identify with the Force women’s experience, for example, of hearing their father, correct though he might be, remind them of the same nugget of advice way too many times when once would suffice.

"Oh-ohhhh yeah – absolutely. So now I feel comforted," Musi said.

Lizzy Musi has nothing else to compare her life with. She and Tricia attended Catholic schools when the family, now relocated to Mooresville, N.C., lived in Carteret, N.J. (where their flamboyant dad at one time took on the political machine as mayor of the city that’s neighbor to Newark Liberty Airport). But Mom pulled them out of school early so many times to head to the racetrack to watch and help Dad race that they didn’t get too involved (although they managed most of the time to stay on the good side of the church).

“Sometimes I go through our family albums, and you’ll always see pictures of my sister and me at the track,” Musi said. “We were constantly at the track. We have so many memories of being at the track with all the Pro Street races back in the day, with Tony Christian. Those were the good ol’ days. We’re just so familiar with it and have grown to love it from my dad. My mom said she used to roll me around in the stroller at Englishtown (New Jersey’s Old Bridge Township Raceway Park). She said when the Funny Cars would go down the track, it was like nothin’ – I was just sleeping in the carriage.”

So engine noise has progressed from a lullaby to the sound of success.

Mastering a sometimes unwieldy Pro Nitrous car was a huge step.

“I’m not going to lie – When I first got in the car it was a little different feeling [from a Top Sportsman car]. From a Camaro to a Stratus is almost like a Space Shuttle. It’s like a big bubble. It took a little bit, but actually, I adapted very quickly to it. I’m very comfortable.”

Maybe one day she and Pat Musi once again pursue their goal of being the first father-daughter combination to win at the same drag race. If Pat Musi takes to the track again in another class – like he did in the ADRL’s Pro Modified ranks as Lizzy cut her teeth in Top Sportsman – they could beat Funny Car’s John Force and Top Fuel-driving daughter Brittany.

Her dad has raced in NHRA Pro Mod action. In this same car that Lizzy drives, he won the NHRA’s 2009 race at Norwalk.

But Lizzy Musi is much different than the Force women, more perhaps like Gumout/Dote Racing Dragster driver Leah Pritchett, who can turn a wrench to help service her car.

“I would love to do as much as I can,” Musi said, revealing her love – literally -- for the nuts and bolts of the sport. Some of her guys, including Joe Dunn, will tell her to take the valve cover off and get to work. Another showed her how to lock valves.

"I'd like to learn stuff, but it’s so hard when it's in the moment and you can't sit there and try to teach,” Musi said. “One time we were in Vegas a couple of years ago, and it was just me and my dad and one of his crew guys. We took the whole motor apart, which was a cool experience. I like doing that kind of stuff. I work on the manifolds. From working in the shop, I probably can list all the pieces from the bottom of the pan to the top of the manifold, all the parts and bolts and pieces. I want to be familiar with that stuff."

She said it would be helpful while listening to the engine just before a burnout. "Some guys might have a loose rocker on their engine when they're firing up and about to do a burnout. Some people can catch that – like Rickie Smith and my dad. From experience they can catch that. It's good to know that kind of stuff. I know that's in time. I would love to have that [ability]. It makes you a better driver . . . [knowing] what you're feeling, what you hear, all of that. It helps the team out, too.”

Musi was fascinated by the tale of Kim LaHaie Richards, whose dad, master mechanic Dick LaHaie, taught her to assemble a race-car engine in a cross-continental phone conversation.

“She’s really bad-ass,” Musi said. “I definitely look up to her. I read an article about her and thought, ‘Look at her!’ ”

And now look at Lizzy Musi. She has earned the right to be included in drag racing’s “Year of the Women” discussion. With Angie Smith’s Pro Stock Motorcycle victory last Sunday at Epping, N.H., NHRA pro females have won 102 times. If the PDRA were to match that, Lizzy Musi pretty much would have to accomplish that all by herself.

With Musi genes and a spirit that’s a well-balanced blend of curiosity and aggressiveness, she’d give it her best shot.

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