Nothing gets the best of Lizzy Musi for too long.

Sure, her megawatt smile that flashes blindingly bright, straight chicklets and her cherubic face framed by flowing dark hair peg her as the one who’ll work the room at an Italian family celebration, making sure each elderly relative has that extra dollop of caponata or helping of gnocchi. Her ready laugh and breezy New Jersey self-assurance easily would earn her the Miss Congeniality award, if only drag racing handed out such a prize.

But on the job as a PDRA Pro Nitrous driver, Lizzy Musi is about as huggable as a wildcat. Aggressive, intense, and fearless of her environment, this 23-year-old has all the genes of her father, Pat Musi, renowned engine builder and outlaw doorslammer racing icon with eight Pro Street class championships.

Her switch from the Top Sportsman class to quicker Pro Nitrous this year started out strong. Driving the Jerry Bickel-built Dodge Stratus that Curacao’s Frank Brandao owns and that her father drove extensively, she made a splash in her debut – and the PDRA’s – in April at the Spring Open at Rockingham, N.C. She qualified second and became the first woman to break 200 miles per hour in eighth-mile Pro Modified racing en route to a semifinal finish.

Since then, she has struggled against a mechanical problem that she and her team finally sorted out. And she said she’s ready to pounce this weekend on the U.S. 131 Motorsports Park dragstrip at Martin, Mich.

Even despite fighting through what turned out to be a transmission issue that started at the season’s second event, the Georgia Drags at Valdosta, she was again the No. 2 starter at Memphis.

“We tried everything and found out it was the transmission oil we were running, which was totally wrong. Once I started it and tried to get it in gear – you have to hit the transbrake button to get in gear because I’m running a Bruno-Lenco – and it literally shut the car off once I tried to get in gear. I was battling it. Basically, I was trying to fight a battle I was never going to win. I’m surprised I got the runs in that I did,” Musi said.

“Oh, it was bad. I was doing the last qualifying run, or maybe it was the one before the last. I had to try to get it started five times,” she said. “Finally it got started. The motor was heated up and actually, the car ran the fastest it ever has: a (3).79. I was so surprised.” She matched Tommy Franklin’s time but yielded the top-qualifying position with her 198.67-mph speed that was slightly slower than his 198.93.

“It ran a .79 after trying to start up five times in a row with the motor heated up!” she repeated, just to try to let that impossible notion sink in.

“After that round I was so overwhelmed,” Musi said. She told herself, “That’s crazy! We can’t be running like this. We’ve got to figure out this problem. We’ve definitely got something going on here.”

Finally they recognized what was wrong, remedied that, and went testing at the track near their shop at Mooresville, N.C. “It started up and went right in gear like nothing ever happened. I’m very thankful we can move on from that. I’m glad I got that out of the way. The cars are finicky. They’re tricky. You’ve just got to be on it all the time. They’re all touchy.

“I’ve just got to get back in my routine,” she said. “I’m not going to lie – it threw me off a little bit.”

But it steeled her resolve. “From being so worked up over that, she said, “I’m ready to just rip up the track,” she said. “I’m ready. I get in bed thinking about it. Everywhere I go, my mind is ‘I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready!’ “

Musi is ready, too, to ditch any doubts from observers that she can’t master these temperamental and sometimes-ill-handling cars. What put that idea in some people’s heads was her nasty-looking Top Sportsman crash in ADRL action at Bristol, Tenn., that gave her high-profile publicity for all the wrong reasons.

“When it took off right from under me,” she said of that car, “I could feel it just let go. I could feel the car hopping on its side and all I see is the wall. At that moment, I’m like, ‘OK . . . What is going to happen now? I’d really better hold on.’ I had no idea. All of a sudden the car lifted up and I’m looking down, literally, at the wall. It was like I was on a ride or something, like one of those at an amusement park. I’m looking straight down at the ground, and I see sparks flying up. I said, ‘This is insane.’ At that point, I had no idea what would happen after that. Then the car landed, actually, straight down.”

Astoundingly, Musi wasn’t injured. All that hurt was her pride. “That whole incident, I was more mad than anything,” she said. “I was so bummed out.”

Moreover, she said she “had no idea it was going to blow up like that” into a media circus, with attention from outlets that generally pay no attention whatsoever to drag racing. “ADRL wasn’t televised, No. 1, so that’s what got me,” she said. “Still, to this day, if I look it up [on the Internet], the pages [of discussion on various Web sites] will go on and on for 20 pages about that incident. It’s kind of nuts.”

She has learned not to look at the gossip and unsolicited online critiques of her. What really bugged her, though, she said, was “now they’re going to think I can’t drive.”  But “they” would be so wrong. And she knows that. She’s over it.

“I’m glad I came along from that and showed people now what I can do,” Musi said.

But she isn’t finished showing what she can do.

“Still, to this day, I’m learning, every step of the way,” she said. “There’s so much to experience in these cars it’s crazy.”

When the announcement came last fall that Lizzy Musi, who started in the Jr. Dragster ranks, would be racing a Pro Nitrous car with backing from Lucas Oil, Edelbrock, and Sheikh Mohammad Al Sabah of Kuwait, she made it clear: “I want to do more than race. I want to win.”

She said, “Running my dad’s car is an incredible feeling. He’s been putting so much work into it. He comes up with something new all the time. It’s cool to race one of his engines. It’s like a beast underneath the hood. I’m the guinea pig for some stuff, but I’m fully for it. I work in the business, too, and it’s helping our customers out, and I don’t mind doing that one bit.”

Musi’s dad and mentor said, “I think the time has come for us to make this move. She has been a good student, and has done a great job of learning. Lizzy has taken her time to learn the ins and outs and has done a great job of rolling with the punches.

“She learned a lot from that accident,” he said of that Bristol incident. “It’s not a matter of IF you’re going to crash but WHEN. We’ve all crashed. But she did exactly what we [longtime friend Rickie Smith and he] told her. We can feel it in the seat, but we can’t explain exactly how it feels, how far you can push a car.”

Pat Musi said he’s teaching Lizzy not to be simply a passenger in her race car: “I always say we have drivers and passengers, and we’ve got a lot of passengers” in the sport.

Lizzy Musi definitely isn’t just along for the ride.

“I’m really thankful I ran that [Top Sportsman] class as a stepping stone to run Pro Nitrous. I definitely learned a lot, and that class is pretty tough. You’re running with the best of the best, and you’ve got to be on your game when you’re running. You’ve got to be on your lights, on your dial-in. You’ve got to be consistent, which helped me out with driving Pro Nitrous this year, for sure.

“I wanted to keep my routine the same – stay focused, have all that the same. Top Sportsman’s pretty competitive, too. They’re head-to-head with each other. There are heavy hitters in both classes,” Musi said.

She said she couldn’t make up her mind which is harder: “I don’t know, to be honest. They’re both tough classes.”

But Musi said she likes this Pro Nitrous car, calling it “probably one of the best cars I ever drove, to be point-bank honest with you. It feels so good downtrack it’s incredible. Then with her loud, happy laugh she added, “compared to the first one I drove!”

Lizzy Musi knows she has the perfect mentor in her dad.

“He has major experience. What I admire most about him is how passionate and determined he is about what he does. That definitely inspires me to do what I do today,” she said. “I wanted to follow in his footsteps. To be able to race with him is really cool, and I can’t thank him enough for being there for me and giving me this opportunity to race and helping me out. I remember going to his races and trying to help him out and watch him win all these races. I always had a good time, and I love supporting my dad.”       

Now the driving shoe is on another foot, but Pat Musi is genuinely pleased to return the favor.