Racer's Igniting Hope

Nancy Matter attended her first race at the fabled San Fernando Raceway at the tender age of three. While growing up in the Southern California hotbed of drag racing, she spent countless weekends going bracket racing with her mom, and traveled to numerous NHRA National and Divisional events with her mother's husband at the time, even working at the Corporate Office when she was a teenager. To say the hook was set in her young, impressionable mind during these years, would be an understatement.

Her strong desire to further her involvement in drag racing landed the youngster a summer job at NHRA, where she met and knew "everyone." Nancy's first hands-on Funny Car experience came when she met Lou and Vicki Gasparrelli, and she crewed with their competitive Alcohol Funny Car team throughout her teenage years.

Nancy stepped away from racing to raise her two children, Ryan and Jamie, where she developed a career in the music industry. In 1998, Nancy founded Moonlight Mastering, a successful music studio, earning upwards of 70 gold and platinum recordings together with mega-superstars such as Peter Gabriel, The Who, Ray Charles, Genesis, and Run DMC, just to name a few. She always kept her fundamental goal in mind, going back to Drag Racing as an owner/driver.

In 2001, Matter enrolled herself into the Frank Hawley School of Drag Racing earning her Super Comp license. She purchased her first race car, truck and trailer and tools to run Super Comp within the competitive NHRA Division 7 Drag Racing Series.

Nancy knew from the very beginning that she was destined to race a Funny Car, but realized that driving a dragster would earn her some very valuable experience. During three years of competitive Super Comp racing she also crewed on John Patton's "Foolish Money" Funny Car team, absorbing as much specialized knowledge as she could.

In 2005, Nancy purchased her first Top Alcohol Funny Car operation and finalized her license at the beginning of 2006 season, then moving to Texas. She proceeded to compete for 14 years at select NHRA National and Lucas Oil Divisional Events. Her team never finished out of the Top 10 for the duration of that time period within the regional area.

In 2015, Matter and Team were chosen to represent Guardian For Heroes / American Valor - The Chris Kyle Legacy. To date, Matter's Team, through her merchandise and her spark plug repurposing efforts, Racer's Igniting Hope, has raised not only awareness for Vetted Soldiers and Veterans, but has also raised in excess of $100,000 to help those in need. Matter's Team is currently in their 9th year with American Valor as their chosen Charity recipient.

In 2017, Matter became the owner of her first nitro endeavor with an NHRA Legal Heritage Nostalgia Trans Am Funny Car. Matter's Team has several wins, multiple track records along with several final round appearances. Respectively, she is licensed in Top Alcohol and Nostalgia Funny Car.

Matter is very close to finishing her newly acquired NHRA Top Fuel Funny Car with a stronger combination and personal performance upgrades for safety to the chassis. She is looking forward to upgrading her license later this year and competing within the NHRA Mission Foods Championship Drag Racing Series as the first Owner / Driver in over twenty five years.

Well I have been sitting on announcing this show bust since the flyer came out I guess I can spill the beans!!!

July 27th in Troy NY for Uncle Sam Jam The Ryan Matter Band will be opening for the Legendary Pat Travers Band !!!!

NHRA: Championship Drag Racing 2024 Schedule. NOTE: There are 2 TDB's on this that are yet to be released.

Autolite Spark Plugs Red Line Synthetic Oil Tommy Tijerina StopTech O'Reilly Auto Parts Travis Frederick

We Love receiving Racers Used Autolite Spark Plugs to raise money for Those in Need!! Thank you for a great Product!

Labor Day 2022

We can not say enough about our friends at Autolite spark plugs who donated 1500 spark plugs to be repurposed into keychains for American Valor, First Responders, Our Police, Fire and Rescue and families that have children with DIPG.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Nancy Matter Racing

We are a bit behind with keychains starting up this season. But we will have them in stock soon. We have raised and donated over $45,000 so far to date and we will be adding to that. Just a slow start for 2022.

Thank you to everyone who supports what we do.

One of our repurposed Spark Plug Christmas Ornaments........

We apologize for the delay of our year end post season update. First, we would like to thank all of the Tracks, Fans and other Teams that have supported drag racing this year. Without all of you supporting all of us, there would be no drag racing, the sport WE LOVE.

2021 started out phenomenal this year and slowed down for RIH as the year progressed.

This year we were able to raise $6475.00 We are moving things around right now, and the plan is (now that cooler weather is finally upon us) to get approximately 4,000 plugs drilled by year end. Taped and ready for powder coating in January, and then bling and finalize beginning in February until our first event as time allows at the end of March. We would like to Thank Tom Furches, Jeff Krug, Georgina Buckley Ray Stringer, Nancy Matter, Russell Smith, Tim Boychuck, Mike Newkirk, Steve Timoszyk Daniel Butherus Bobby Dodrill Danny Smith and a few others for donating their used plugs to us this year. We are REALLY Looking forward to next year and starting all over again.

We have reached a milestone of over $40,000 raised between our keychains and individual donations direct from others since we began raising awareness in 2015 for Chris, Chad, Guardian For Heroes, American Valor, 22Kill, Operation Valor, A Service Pup, Skyball, Children's Hospital, Various Go Fund Me Accounts, DRAW and Arianna's Family, who succumbed to DIPG, a year ago. Make it a great day, Enjoy the Holidays, we will see you in 2022.

20 Years. Shared from Navy Seal Danny Dietz Memorial page.