There is a running joke inside Jarman Motorsports that Brandi Peter has never made it beyond 60 feet in her Competition Eliminator dragster.
The first time she attempted it, the engine dropped a valve.
After a frantic rebuild and a month-long effort to make the final divisional race, she returned to the starting line—and dropped another valve approximately 60 feet into the run.
When the team tried again this season with its other engine, the car suffered another major valvetrain failure before Brandi could even complete a burnout.
At some point, most racers would begin questioning the car, the combination, their budget and perhaps the entire idea.
Brandi has questioned all of it.
What she has not questioned is whether she intends to finish what she started.
“I set out to do this,” Brandi said. “I’m going to do it.”
That determination has become the defining characteristic of a racing program that has encountered nearly every possible obstacle before it has even had the opportunity to begin.
A Racer Long Before She Became a Drag Racer
Brandi did not grow up inside the conventional drag racing pipeline.
Her father worked on Legend cars and Super Late Models at Colorado National Speedway, and some of her earliest memories involve sleeping on racetrack bleachers while her family raced. However, her childhood was largely devoted to gymnastics, where she competed at a high level and endured the physical demands that would affect her body years later.
Drag racing entered the picture when her father took her to the high school drags at Bandimere Speedway.
Brandi entered in a 2004 Honda Civic and advanced six or eight rounds.
That was enough.
“I was hooked,” she said. “That was it. I was done.”
She did not have a purpose-built race car, enclosed trailer or established drag racing operation waiting for her. She simply found a way to participate.
In her early 20s, Brandi purchased a white 2013 Ford Mustang with a manual transmission. Her father advised that an automatic would likely make her more competitive. Brandi interpreted the conversation a little differently.
In her mind, he had told her she could not do it.
That was all the motivation she needed.
Within days, the Mustang had a shift light. Shortly afterward, Brandi reached the final round of a Fun Ford event at Bandimere in a field she remembers containing hundreds of cars.
She drove the Mustang to the track carrying a jack and another set of wheels and tires. She changed the tires in the pits, raced the car, converted it back to street trim and drove home.
When necessary, she folded down the rear seats and slept between the passenger compartment and trunk.
It was not glamorous, but it was racing.
That same Mustang also introduced Brandi to Lance Jarman.
Jarman worked as Bandimere Speedway’s facility operations manager for approximately a decade and came from a family deeply rooted in drag racing. When Brandi showed up with a Ford he did not recognize, she immediately caught his attention.
The two have now been together for approximately 10 years. They became engaged at the NHRA U.S. Nationals and eventually built what is now Jarman Motorsports.
Rebuilding More Than Race Cars
Brandi’s path back into racing was interrupted by responsibilities far beyond the racetrack.
Her family opened a smoothie business when she was 12 years old. What began as a franchise location eventually became the family’s own franchise system after a lengthy acquisition process that took approximately 12 years.
Brandi gradually assumed much of the operation.
Like many small-business owners, her title rarely describes the full job. She handles bookkeeping, register programming, security systems, maintenance and whatever problem happens to appear next.
When something breaks, she often fixes it herself.
That same mentality now carries into Jarman Motorsports.
The team does not have the financial resources to outsource every stage of its racing program. Brandi and Lance assemble engines in their garage, install their own components, sleep in the trailer and perform nearly every task they can manage themselves.
“We’re very budgeted racers,” Brandi said. “If I didn’t assemble everything myself in our garage and sleep in the trailer on an air mattress, there’s no way we could run Comp.”
It is grassroots racing at one of the sport’s most technically demanding levels.
Competition Eliminator is not forgiving. Engines are highly specialized, maintenance intervals are short and the margin for error is nearly nonexistent. Jarman Motorsports’ F/Dragster uses a four-cylinder engine and a Liberty air-shifted manual transmission—a distinctly different combination that Brandi remains determined to master.
The dragster is only 205 inches long, earning it the nickname “Stubby.”
One engine, a DRCE2-based four-cylinder combination, is known around the team as the “half a Pro Stock motor.” The other, using a JC51 cylinder head, carries the name “Dirty Diana.”
Either one represents a serious undertaking.
Together, they have provided Brandi with an education she never requested but will likely never forget.
Sixty Feet, Twice
The team originally planned to begin competing in F/Dragster during the 2023 season.
Brandi and Lance had purchased the car and much of the associated Competition Eliminator equipment from longtime racer and close family friend Clint Neff. Brandi had already earned her Competition Eliminator, Super Comp and ET licenses in another dragster.
Approximately one month before the final divisional event, the team took Stubby testing.
Neff made a promising initial shakedown pass.
Brandi climbed into the car next.
She traveled approximately 60 feet before the engine dropped a valve.
The failure could have ended the season immediately. Neff refused to allow that to happen.
Before the team had fully processed what had occurred, he was already making phone calls.
The block was rushed to Canada. A cylinder head went to Indiana. Valves and other components were sourced wherever they could be found. Darin Morgan assisted with the JC51 cylinder head, while parts and people moved across international borders in a concentrated effort to get Brandi ready to compete.
David From ultimately drove components down from Canada.
During the week leading into the divisional, Brandi helped assemble the engine, installed it in the car and worked through nearly two days with little or no sleep.
The engine fired.
The team checked the valve lash, loaded the trailer and returned to the track for Wednesday testing.
On the first attempt, the engine dropped another valve.
Again, Brandi had traveled approximately 60 feet.
The car went into what the team jokingly called “timeout.”
Behind the humor was real disappointment. The team had invested an extraordinary amount of work into reaching that moment, only to suffer another unrelated component failure almost immediately.
The first incident was traced to a rocker that cracked horizontally and pulled the threads from its mounting point. The second involved a broken valve spring that corkscrewed, coil-bound and allowed the valve to lose control.
Neither failure resulted from Brandi missing the shift.
She checked.
The shift occurs approximately eight-tenths of a second into the run, well before the car reaches the Christmas tree. Peter immediately reviewed the Racepak data and asked Neff whether she had caused the failure.
She had made the shift exactly as instructed.
For a driver already trying to prove herself in a difficult car, that confirmation mattered.
When the Body Forces Racing to Wait
The mechanical setbacks were followed by a far more serious personal obstacle.
Brandi had already undergone multiple surgeries resulting largely from years of gymnastics, including ankle reconstructions, hip surgery, a previous back procedure and a biceps repair.
Then, near Thanksgiving in 2024, a disc at L5-S1 ruptured severely into her spinal canal.
In March 2025, Brandi underwent spinal fusion surgery.
She was not particularly afraid of surgery itself. She was afraid of what fusing her back at a young age might mean for the remainder of her life.
She sought multiple surgical opinions, researched the procedure extensively and struggled with the possibility that additional levels could eventually require treatment.
More than a year later, she calls the operation one of the best decisions she has made.
She can work around the trailer, climb on equipment and move without the pain that previously followed her.
The recovery delayed her return to the dragster, but it also reinforced a lesson that had already appeared repeatedly throughout her life: sometimes moving forward first requires stopping long enough to rebuild correctly.
Another Attempt—and Another Failure
With Brandi physically recovered, Jarman Motorsports prepared its secondary engine for testing.
The intention was to make approximately 10 runs, allow Peter to become comfortable with the car and preserve the primary combination. In Competition Eliminator trim, the team estimates it may need to replace connecting rods after roughly 70 runs.
The secondary engine was supposed to provide affordable seat time.
Instead, testing at Western Colorado Dragway in Grand Junction produced another extraordinary sequence of events.
Initially, the fuel-injected combination was excessively rich and would not accelerate beyond approximately 4,500 rpm. Brandi released the clutch for a burnout, but the car did not move.
The team returned to the pits and worked through the fuel-system issues.
Neff later climbed into the car to check the two-step and evaluate the combination. During the test, the camshaft keyway failed. The camshaft stopped turning, but rotating inertia carried the engine to approximately 9,600 rpm.
Every valve and pushrod was bent.
Fortunately, the cylinder heads and pistons largely survived.
After years of preparation
“I didn’t even know what to say,” she recalled. “I think I just looked at it and said, ‘Wow. Okay.’”
There is a point where bad luck becomes almost statistically impressive.
Brandi can laugh about it now, at least occasionally.
However, repeated failure creates a psychological burden that racers rarely discuss. Every new noise becomes suspicious. Every assembly step gets questioned. Every run begins with the memory of the last component that failed.
Brandi has felt that pressure.
She has also refused to surrender to it.
Building It Herself
One positive has emerged from the repeated engine failures: Peter is learning the entire combination from the inside out.
Jarman’s philosophy is straightforward. Anyone who wants to race the equipment must also learn to maintain it.
“The only good thing about all this is that I’m going to know how to put those two motors back together really well,” she said.
When the secondary engine failed, the team decided to assemble its primary engine and move forward.
Brandi installed the crankshaft, pistons and connecting rods. When she attempted to install the camshaft, she discovered two damaged areas on a component that had been sitting unused for three years.
It was another delay—but this time, help arrived quickly.
Bullet Racing Cams initially estimated approximately five weeks for the repair. After Peter explained the team’s circumstances and upcoming schedule, the company completed the work in roughly a week and a half.
When the repaired camshaft arrived at her home on a Saturday, Peter felt something she had not experienced in a long time.
Excitement.
Not anxiety. Not dread. Not suspicion.
Excitement.
“I had this overwhelming good feeling that things were right,” she said. “I still do.”
A Family Program Finds Its Momentum
While Brandi’s F/Dragster program has struggled to leave the starting line, Jarman Motorsports has remained active through Rydier’s Junior Dragster effort.
Rydier’s 2026 season began with mechanical problems of its own.
A driver normally capable of producing excellent reaction times suddenly struggled to leave within two or three hundredths of the tree. The car stumbled badly, and the team spent several events attempting to diagnose the issue.
Through the first four points races, Rydier lost nearly every opening round and buyback opportunity.
For the adults, the hardest part was watching a capable young driver become frustrated because they could not provide him with a consistent race car.
Before the Division 5 Junior Jam at Julesburg Dragstrip, the team removed the problematic engine and reinstalled “Old Faithful,” despite knowing it was due for service.
Rydier responded by winning the Division 5 championship and earning an invitation to the national shootout.
The victory also settled a family disagreement.
Brandi had included Brainerd on the team’s tentative schedule because Neff’s wife, Jamie, is originally from the area and the Neff family attends the event regularly.
Lance had rejected the idea.
He did not want to drive approximately 14 hours to sit in Minnesota’s August heat and humidity.
During Rydier’s opening time trial at Julesburg, Brandi looked at Lance and warned him.
“You know your kid is going to make you go to Brainerd, right?”
By the end of the event, the decision had been made for him.
The family was going to Brainerd.
The Next Opportunity
Brandi currently needs to attend a divisional event to obtain the required grade points for her Competition Eliminator license.
The plan is for her to travel to Brainerd and race the divisional event alongside Neff and his family.
For Brandi, the trip represents more than another entry on the schedule.
It is an opportunity to finally stage the car, release the clutch, make the shifts and experience the run she has spent years trying to complete.
She knows another failure is possible. Every racer does.
But the engine is back in the car. The team is preparing to test. Brandi believes the combination is finally ready.
More importantly, she is ready.
Conquering the Beast
Jarman Motorsports has discussed replacing the Liberty manual transmission with an automatic.
The change could simplify the combination and allow Brandi to begin accumulating runs with fewer variables. She has nothing against automatics. She has driven them before and may choose one again in the future.
She simply cannot make that decision now.
Not after everything that has happened.
Changing directions today would feel less like a strategic choice and more like allowing the car to defeat her.
That takes Brandi back to the argument she had with her father in her early 20s.
He believed an automatic Mustang would be more competitive.
She heard that she could not win with a manual.
So she went racing and reached a final round.
More than a decade later, the challenge is significantly greater, the equipment is infinitely more complicated and the consequences are substantially more expensive.
The response is still the same.
She must prove to herself that she can do it.
Perhaps an automatic will eventually enter the car. Perhaps the team will change classes, combinations or objectives.
But Brandi wants those decisions to come after she has conquered the current challenge—not because she surrendered to it.
“You have to do it from the lens of conquering,” she said, “not from the lens of defeat.”
Her story is not defined by the two failed 60-foot attempts, the damaged engines, the spinal fusion or the seasons that did not unfold according to plan.
It is defined by what happened after each one.
She returned to the garage.
She took the engine apart.
She learned how it worked.
Then she began putting it back together.
Again.
Brandi Peter does not know exactly what will happen when she releases the clutch the next time.
She only knows there will be a next time.
And eventually, 60 feet will be nothing more than the beginning of the run.
