At 12, Brooke Meyer has already spent five years doing something many kids her age have never experienced: racing a car.
The Riverhead Middle School student discovered racing in 2021 when she was 7, when her dad, Joe Meyer, took her to Riverhead Raceway, a track he had visited for years. Brooke quickly fell for the cars, the noise and the competition. Then she saw the Bandoleros, small race cars driven by young racers, take the track.
“I looked at my dad, and he already knew what was coming,” Brooke says. “I saw it in his face. He was starting to regret it a little, but I ran up to him, and I asked, ‘Can I possibly do this one day?’ He said, ‘We’ll see,” and the next thing I know, about two months later, we’re going to pick up my first car.”
Today, Brooke races the No. 22 Bandolero, a number inspired by NASCAR driver Joey Logano. She competes at Riverhead and travels regularly to tracks throughout the Northeast and as far south as North Carolina and Virginia. Her family’s racing schedule can mean ferries, hotels, long drives, and, sometimes, three races in one weekend.
For Brooke, the racing is only part of the appeal. She loves anything with a motor, spending her time repairing and building go-karts and repairing quads. Her father’s rule is simple: If she is not helping in the shop, she is not racing. Her mother, Heather Meyer, says school comes with a similar expectation. Brooke is an honor-roll student, and bad grades would mean being benched.
Brooke is currently ranked eighth nationally in asphalt oval Bandolero racing, according to her, among 200 drivers, and is currently the nation’s top girl. She ranked seventh nationally in asphalt road-course racing and second in the East Coast-based Showdown Series. She is also the 2025 New York State champion.
Last April, she won her first race at Dominion Raceway in Virginia, a track she had never raced at before. She later competed in five road-course races there, finishing with two third-place finishes, two fourths and a fifth.
“A lot of people told me I can’t do it just because I’m a girl,” Brooke says. “One of my favorite things is now when I beat them; I love hearing their dads go up to their sons and say, ‘You just got beat by a girl.’ That always brings a smile to my face.”
Heather has watched the sport transform her daughter. Racing, she says, has made Brooke more confident and taught her responsibility, while also showing her how to handle disappointments alongside victories.
Riverhead remains particularly meaningful. Before the family began traveling so extensively, Brooke and her father spent countless nights at the track and in the shop working on a modified race car.
Now, NASCAR is the goal. Brooke hopes to race professionally, but she is just as interested in the other sides of the sport, including mechanics and pit-crew work.
