{"id":102738,"date":"2025-12-18T18:44:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/jeff-melnick-celebrates-second-pdra-pro-632-world-championship-in-three-years\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T18:44:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:44:04","slug":"jeff-melnick-celebrates-second-pdra-pro-632-world-championship-in-three-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/jeff-melnick-celebrates-second-pdra-pro-632-world-championship-in-three-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Melnick Celebrates Second PDRA Pro 632 World Championship in Three Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Jeff Melnick returned to the Red Line Oil PDRA Championship Awards Banquet Stage to accept his 2025 Pro 632 presented by PTC Converters world championship trophy, he quoted the Meat Loaf song \u201cTwo Out of Three Ain\u2019t Bad.\u201d Teamed up with Alan O\u2019Brien and the Greenbrier Excavating & Paving team, Melnick secured his second Pro 632 world title in the last three seasons on the strength of three wins in five final-round appearances across the seven-race season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melnick\u2019s second championship season was much different than his first, but that had nothing to do with his on-track competition. Early in the 2023 season, Melnick was diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma. He underwent aggressive chemotherapy between races, and while the side effects presented challenges in racing\u2019s extreme conditions, Melnick powered through and won the title. During his championship speech, he broke the news that he was cancer-free and in remission. Without those challenges this season, Melnick could focus completely on the task at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJust getting to the racetrack was a major hurdle to overcome. It took every ounce, everything I had, to do that,\u201d Melnick said, \u201cand now it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, this is kind of boring.\u2019 I don\u2019t have cancer and nothing\u2019s really going on like that and it\u2019s just a normal year. When you\u2019re used to that kind of chaos, then you go to a normal year, it\u2019s like, \u2018Well, this is no big deal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Gary Rowe photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After winning the 2023 championship with a unique Barry Allen Racing Engines AMC engine and switching to a big-block Chevy platform for 2024, Melnick and the team switched again to a Ford for 2025. At just the second race of the season, Melnick qualified No. 1 and reached the final round at the Mid-Atlantic Showdown at Virginia Motorsports Park, where he lost to first-time winner Kyle Salminen. He then qualified No. 1 and won the North vs. South Shootout at Maryland International Raceway before winning the next two events, the Northern Nationals at U.S. 131 Motorsports Park and the Thunder Valley Throwdown at Bristol Dragway, from the No. 2 position. Melnick closed out the season with a runner-up finish at DragWars at GALOT Motorsports Park and another No. 1 qualifier award at the Brian Olson Memorial World Finals at VMP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys worked really hard with this program and put a lot of effort, thought, money, time, energy, everything into it all year long,\u201d Melnick said, crediting O\u2019Brien, Allen, and tuner Patrick Barnhill. \u201cWe came out with a Ford this year. We thought it would be a good motor and we were right. It is a good motor, so we\u2019ve been able to figure it out. We\u2019ve been able to get three wins out of seven races. We had a great season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melnick cut his teeth in the Top Sportsman ranks before his work as an expert fabricator led to the opportunity to drive O\u2019Brien\u2019s Greenbrier Excavating & Paving \u201920 Camaro in Pro 632. He\u2019s also continued to run his own ProCharged Exotic Fabrication \u201902 Avenger in MagnaFuel Top Sportsman, where he finished fifth in the 2025 points standings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look back 10 years and it\u2019s like, \u2018Wow, how did I get here?\u2019 I don\u2019t really know, but I did, and I\u2019m very blessed to be surrounded by a lot of great people is the reality of it,\u201d Melnick said. \u201cThere\u2019s a saying, \u2018If you want to be the next millionaire, you hang out with millionaires.\u2019 Well, I hang out with world champions. You\u2019re going to be the next world champion if you hang out with a bunch of people that win a lot. That\u2019s really how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tara Bowker photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Melnick\u2019s team owner, Alan O\u2019Brien, also won the 2025 world championship in Laris Motorsports Insurance Elite Top Dragster presented by Greenbrier Excavating & Paving, while teammate Carson Perry swept the World Finals weekend in Super Street presented by Brian\u2019s Heating & Cooling LLC by winning the Summit Racing Equipment PDRA ProStars, qualifying No. 1, and winning the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBarry [Allen] is a really underrated bad dude in the industry,\u201d Melnick said, also sharing credit with the whole Greenbrier team and his family for their support. \u201cAt the World Finals we were No. 1 qualifier with the 632 car with Barry\u2019s big-block Ford. Carson Perry was No. 1 qualifier with the AMC nitrous combination in Super Street. Then Alan O\u2019Brien was No. 1 qualifier in Elite Top Dragster with a twin-turbo AMC, so three completely different combinations, all No. 1 qualifiers and two of the three are professional categories. I think that speaks volumes for Barry\u2019s abilities and Patrick\u2019s tuning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The championship runner-up, Walter Lannigan, won both of the GALOT races for two different car owners in a Nelson-powered \u201910 GTO tuned by Jamie Miller. He started the year winning the East Coast Nationals for Chris Holdorf and won the penultimate race of the season, DragWars, for David Cook. Rookie Carson Hoyle finished third in his Musi-powered ATI Performance \u201969 Camaro with a season-ending victory at the World Finals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series will kick off the 2026 season March 25-28 at Darlington Dragway in Hartsville, South Carolina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This story was originally published on December 18, 2025. \"Drag<\/p>\n

The post Jeff Melnick Celebrates Second PDRA Pro 632 World Championship in Three Years<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jeff Melnick returned to the Red Line Oil PDRA Championship Awards Banquet Stage to accept his 2025 Pro 632 presented by PTC Converters world championship trophy, he quoted the Meat Loaf song \u201cTwo Out of Three Ain\u2019t Bad.\u201d Teamed up with Alan O\u2019Brien and the Greenbrier Excavating & Paving team, Melnick secured his second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}