Young Riverhead racer has her sights set on becoming a NASCAR pro

Brooke Meyer seems like a typical 10-year-old. Like any other kid her age, conversation with adults captures only a portion of her attention, which is divided among a variety of other things: her dogs, her digital devices, teasing her parents about everything.

She recently broke her ankle being tackled by a younger cousin — all in good fun — at a family gathering and makes her way around the family’s Riverhead home on a knee scooter, deftly steering around furniture and the family’s three  dachshunds.

Her dexterity on the scooter may just be a hint at Brooke’s passion: NASCAR. She’s already got three seasons under her belt racing Bandelero cars and aspires to be a NASCAR driver. 

She’s turning 11 in April and is looking forward to her fourth year racing Bandeleros, which she started at age 7. Bandeleros are small-scale race cars built for kids. They’re about just under 11 feet long and are powered by modified Briggs and Stratton motors, Brooke explains. The cars race at 55 to 75 mph, depending on the track. 

She remembers the day she first laid eyes on a Bandelero. It was love at first sight. 

“Me and my family have always been big NASCAR fans, and one day, my dad took me to Riverhead Raceway. And all of a sudden, these little cars come out,” Brooke recalled. “And the announcer announces the age groups. And at the time, I was like, wait— I can race that in a year when I’m old enough. So I go running up to my dad— because I was on the playground there —and I go running up to him, saying, ‘Daddy, can I race it?’ And he looks at me,” Brooke mimics the deadpan expression she remembers on her father’s face.  “And he just says, ‘Maybe.’” She smiles. 

“And then next thing you know, because maybe five or six months later we’re going to pick up one of my cars.” 

Brooke’s father, Joe Meyer, is a dedicated racing fan and is a member of a crew team at Riverhead Raceway, working on five of the cars there. “So we have a big team that has tour mods, crate mods, super pro truck, a blunder  bus, per car, street stock. During the summer time, as soon as race season starts,  we’re at the shop three times a week,” Meyer said.

“At least three times a week,” Brooke adds.

“When I’m in the shop, she’s there with me. So she’s taking off tires. She’s doing things that she can handle. She also helps out with the other cars in the shop, even at the track, you gotta change your tires. She will change your tires. She’s not scared to get greasy,” the proud papa says.

But before he’d consent to having his little girl race Bandeleros at age 7, he said, he had to do some research.

“I’ve never seen them before. I’d heard of them. I started researching them online —What’s it all about? And it’s just, it’s really cool,” he said. “It’s a chassis frame. It’s fully framed out — the safety of it, you know, it’s all there, it’s all caged. It’s just a small version of a race car.”

The first time she drove a Bandelero was after her parents bought one. Father and daughter took the car to an empty parking lot in Calverton on a Sunday where he taught her how to operate the gas and the band Brooke did a few laps around the lot. 

“She took it around  the parking lot a couple times, and each time she got a little bit faster, until one time she spun out and almost ran me over, and hit the truck and the trailer. And I said, ‘Okay, that’s good. Let’s put it away,” Meyer said, laughing.

Brooke was on the track in Riverhead for her first race a couple weeks later. 

Joe Meyer admits to being “a nervous parent” that day. “Once she’s in the car on the track, I can’t talk to her. I can’t do anything. She has a transponder in there, and all she could do is listen to the officials. So that’s, that’s all you got,” he said. “I could only watch.”

Brooke remembers that she was nervous, too. “But a few times I was there before, when all the races were over, I would go back there and see all the cars, and I would talk to the Bando drivers. So I already kind of made a few friends, and I was mainly on the track with them. I knew they weren’t going to try and do anything stupid with me,” she said, adding, “hopefully.” 

At her second practice run, Brooke was hooked. “I was like, this is what I want to do. I’m having so much fun with this.”

Brooke now has two Bandelero race cars. The Meyers pack them both into a 22-foot trailer, along with extra tires, equipment, tools and supplies needed for the competition. 

During the winter break in February, the family traveled to Florida for the INEX National Series, where Brooke ranked 13th in the Bandit division in five days of competition. Her best finish was 6th in the Feb. 12 race at the Auburndale Speedway.

There, Brooke did over 500 laps, her mother Heather Meyer said. 

“It’s hard to get practice time, especially with Riverhead. It’s only a few laps before the race. There’s nothing like a set time for practice for them to go out there, she said. “So doing the other track, she gets more seat time.”

There’s a big north-south divide in seat time because of weather and track conditions. All together, Brooke has competed in just over 50 races. In Florida, the Bandeleros compete in 50 races a year. 

“Down there, she’s going against the best kids in the whole country,” Joe Meyer said. “I think six of the top 10 kids were there at the track” last month, he said.

Opening weekend at Riverhead Raceway this year is May 3-4. There’s practice the two weeks before that, but with Brooke’s ankle injury, she’ll likely miss the first practice.

“She wouldn’t be able to even put on her fire suit or her shoes right now,” her mom said.

Brooke can’t wait to get back into her car and race. It’s exciting, she said.

Her most exciting moment in her young career so far? 

“I think when everybody really wrecked and I was driving in first place for like, five laps or something. That was my first exciting moment,” Brooke said. She was referring to a time when several cars around her crashed into each other, and she narrowly managed to pass through the wreck.

“Down in Florida, there was one time where kids right in front of her wrecked, and she literally went in between these cars and, like, the mirrors just tapped, and she made it straight through. She was just like, ‘Holy cow!’,” her father said. “The first words out of her mouth, when she got off the track, were like, ‘Did you see that?’” 

Brooke has had her share of wrecks, though nothing major. “I found out in Florida, I’m very good at saving spin outs,” she said.

The biggest challenge is observing the other drivers, learning how they drive and being able to predict what they’ll do when you try to pass them. It essentially boils down to defensive driving. “You have to remember a lot of the other drivers are still very inexperienced,” Joe Meyer said. “It’s learning a lot about setting cars up to pass, stuff like that. It gets tricky.” 

That’s the challenge that makes racing exciting, Brooke said. 

The young racer has gotten a lot of support from the community, her mother said. 

Her assistant principal at Roanoke Elementary School, Laura Arcuri, became the principal at Pulaski Street Intermediate School this year, when Brooke moved up from Roanoke to Pulaski. Arcuri and Pulaski’s Assistant Principal Jessica Farmer are  “really big supporters,” Heather Meyer said. “They send me pictures of them wearing Brooke’s t-shirts.” The t-shirts are emblazoned with a picture of Brooke’s car, her number 22 and her name. “They come to the races. She’s got a lot of support from school, which is very nice,” her mom said.

The Village Idiot restaurant at the Indian Island Golf Course in Riverhead is hosting a fundraiser for Brooke on April 27 from 1 to 5 p.m., to help defray the costs of racing. The costs of tires, repairs and travel add up, as all race car drivers know. There will be raffles of gift baskets and other items at the event.