In only the second race of her budding Pro Stock career, Camrie Caruso made NHRA history at the Arizona Nationals near Phoenix last weekend.

She eliminated Gen Z colleague Cristian Cuadra in her opening match-up to become only the third woman to win a round in the class. In only her second race – she exited in the first round at the season-opening Winternationals – Caruso joined Lucinda McFarlin and Erica Enders.

McFarlin was the first to do it, beating Don Beverly in the first round of the 1992 Memphis race for her lone round-victory. Enders’ first step toward her four series championships and 389 round-wins came against Rickie Smith in the opening round of the 2005 Reading, Pa., event. McFarlin broke the barrier in the sixth race of 1992. Enders’ first came in the 19th event of 2005. Caruso, driving her Powerbuilt Tools Camaro, made her mark in Race No. 2. Her race day ended in the quarterfinals, as she lost to No. 1 qualifier Kyle Koretsky.

Surely that won’t be the last anyone hears of Camrie Caruso, who just turned 24 years old on Valentine’s Day. This third-generation driver might have little Camping World Drag Racing Series professional experience, but she has big expectations of herself.

“I have big goals. The first goal is to win five races. My second goal is to finish Top 3 in points. And my third goal is I would like to get at least one No. 1 qualifier,” she said.

Caruso has won several Top Dragster trophies and has won once in Super Comp. The Jr. Dragster graduate also has challenged for the championship in the PDRA’s Pro Outlaws 632 class. She described that category’s cars as “the class below Mountain Motor Pro Stock” and “basically mini-Pro Stock.” So she knows the quick way down a dragstrip.

That girl can drive a race car. I’m totally impressed with her. You just teach her one time and she goes out there and does it. That’s awesome. – Jim Yates, crew chief

If she hits her own ambitious first-year targets, it would be no real surprise, considering that when she announced her 2022 debut at last October’s Stampede of Speed at Texas Motorplex, she didn’t even own a motor.

Today she has four, two that 2018 Pro Stock champion Tanner Gray used and two that Drew Skillman used for at least a few of his seven victories. Caruso’s dad, Marc, a five-class NHRA racer during the past 30 years and car owner for Tommy D’Aprile and Alex Laughlin, owns the engines along with his father and Camrie Causo’s grandfather, “Papa Joe.” Joe Caruso competed in Super Gas, Top Sportsman, and Pro Modified.

The Caruso Family Racing’s new engine program is being run in cooperation with Eric Latino’s Titan Racing Engines (formerly Gray Motorsports) at Denver, N.C. Latino, Marc Caruso, Mike Smith, and Stevie Johns massage the motors – and give their new, young driver tutorials in Pro Stock engine prep.

“I work for Titan Racing Engines, as well as Right Trailers. At Titan, I do a lot of the marketing. And when the guys are putting them together, they come and get me: ‘Hey – come learn how to do this.’ They’ve been teaching me things about Pro Stock engines since I got there,” Camrie, who moved last fall to North Carolina from Fairport, N.Y. (just east of Rochester), said.

“I like learning, just because I feel like it makes you a better driver. You know what’s going on when you work on your own car,” she said. However, at the racetrack she has other responsibilities and lets her crew focus on their assignments while she tends to hers. She said, “I’ve debated about doing the transmission, because I enjoy it a lot. But I have other responsibilities [at a race], and if they need it done right then, I might not be there.”

Jim Yates, a two-time (1996-97) Pro Stock champion, is crew chief, like he was for Johnny and Shane Gray for several years.  He had a hunch Camrie would be a rising star in a sport starving for twenty-something racers, but when she got the jump on Cuadra in their Phoenix pairing and never trailed, she might have been slightly startled that success – however small – came so quickly, just 6.538 seconds into their race day. Her 210.08-mph speed in that pass showed she had some power and wasn’t afraid to use it.

“That girl can drive a race car. I’m totally impressed with her,” Yates said after witnessing her first round-win. “You just teach her one time and she goes out there and does it. That’s awesome. For her to get a win [light] in her second race only is incredible, an incredible achievement for her.”

She calmly said, “The round-win was good and exciting. I am glad we got that out of the way.” She went out in round two and showed consistency at 6.566 seconds and 209.98 mph, even though she lost to Kyle Koretsky.

Yates, who earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Maryland, said from the beginning that he wanted “to bring my knowledge and experience to this team to make them the best they can be,” drawing on his familiarity with drivers of different skill levels and with diverse power packages. That, the 25-time Pro Stock winner said, “is really important to a start-up team.” Furthermore, like Caruso’s dad and “Papa,” who co-own and work for a construction company that specializes in kitchen and bath builds and renovations, Yates bring a wealth of business knowledge, too. He established Yates Auto Parts and developed it into an enterprise with 23 stores and its own warehouse in the Washington, D.C., area. He since has sold that, but if his driver ever needs any business advice, she can ask Yates as well as her family.

“He has a lot of knowledge,” Caruso said. “I like that he was a driver, as well.” Pro Stock is a lot more intricate than many people realize, and Yates can help her develop a rhythm in the car.”

The car she lobbied to drive was a Pro Mod, but she said the Pro Stock venture was her father’s direction.

“This is all his idea. I wanted to go Pro Mod racing,” Caruso said. What made Marc Caruso so insistent that she not go that route was his own nasty 2019 accident at Bristol in which he plowed into the sand trap and wound up breaking a lower-lumbar vertebra. “So Pro Stock it was,” she said neatly.

I like learning, just because I feel like it makes you a better driver. You know what’s going on when you work on your own car. – Camrie Caruso

But this racer who likes a challenge is getting one from her Pro Stock car.

“The best way I can explain it,” she said, “is you have to do the same, exact thing every run. You take notes on every single thing. It’s just very detail-oriented.”

Caruso is used to note-taking. She earned marketing and finance degrees from SUNY’s (State University of New York’s) Empire State College, so she has learned how to navigate the business side of racing. She has chased her own money and understands well the basics of marketing-partner procurement.

She has concluded that “the days of people giving away money are over. You have to find out how you can benefit them or they don’t care how they can benefit you. You have to bring something to the table. So I try to find business-to-business things that work for them, maybe a customer for them. There are hundreds of people sending them proposals and marketing decks, asking for money. How are you different than the others?”

With that, she already is ahead of many of her colleagues. Besides, she said she likes handling that aspect of her career.

“You could always have an agency, but I feel like it’s better to do it yourself, because then it’s personal. You have personal relationships with everybody,” Caruso said. “If we want to race at this level, we have to have funding. I just have always found my own way to do it, because I think it’s special that way. It means more to us. My dad and my grandpa can’t fund a Pro Stock deal. I mean, maybe they can – but they’re not going to. And I don’t want anything handed to me. I want to work for it, because it means more.”

She said of her father, “He’s awesome at it. You can call him up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got X Company. How do I get them involved?’ and he has a way. I don’t know how or why, but he’s good at it.”

One thing Caruso hasn’t made up her mind completely about is the matter of whether she wants or needs to be the sport’s “face of the future.” Much talk these days centers on the older-skewing average age of the NHRA fan and of the sanctioning body’s decision-makers.

“Honestly, I think they’re getting better at making it known about the younger [racers],” Caruso said. “But they do struggle a little bit with showing it. You would think they would want to make it a huge deal, but they don’t, really. I haven’t figured it out yet.”

She does know that she isn’t about to put any pressure on herself to assume that role: “I’m going to do whatever I need to do, either way. If they don’t want to make a big deal about it, that’s OK. But I’m still going to do it. It’s all about John Force or the guys who have been around forever, and I get it. But they’re going to have to retire at some point, and who are they going to talk about then?”

We’ll have Camrie Caruso.