Alison Prose has been racing with some success since she was 10 years old, but it wasn’t until her Super Comp victory at the 2024 NHRA Midwest Nationals that she felt like she’d found the key.
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #195, the Women of Power Issue, in July/August of 2025.
“It was like I’d broken the seal, like winning was possible, and that’s made me more confident,” says Prose, an active and respected competitor in both Super Street and Super Comp alongside brother Nathan, a multi-time Super Gas winner at the division level. “Going rounds feels less of a feat; it’s easier to convince myself that I’m going to win the race. It’s like, ‘I’ve done this before, and I can do this again.’”
Tapping into confidence hasn’t come easy for Prose, who admits that she can be her own worst enemy – both on and off the racetrack. For the past few years, however, the Indiana-based third-generation racer has been collecting win lights and battling for trophies.
In 2021, she reached the final round of the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk driving the family’s Super Comp dragster, and in 2022, she reached her first Super Street final round at a division race at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. Her divisional scorecard has continued to fill in nicely; In 2023, she was back in the final in Indianapolis and also reached the Topeka final round. She again came quite close to victory at the first Indy division race this season, marking her fourth Super Street final round.
“In the past, I kind of felt ‘less than’ than my competitors, but I’m turning 27, and I feel like I’m getting to the point in my life that I’m not a kid anymore,” she explains. “I’m starting to understand that what I feel about me is what matters the most, not what others feel about me. I’m focusing less on how I look to others, and I know that if I’m happy with myself, I can do great things. I’m doing better with telling myself I have just as a good a chance as anyone out here.”
Part of what motivates Prose is the fact that not only is she doing something she loves, she’s doing it with family. Her father, Bob, began racing as a teenager, following in his own father’s footsteps. Gray Prose, Bob’s father, is a longtime engine builder with deep ties in drag racing. The family shop backs up to Wabash Valley Dragway in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Prose recalled riding her bike around the pits when she was very young.
“I think I just always assumed I was going to race,” she says. “I was at the track from the time I was a newborn, watching my dad race his Camaro and do huge wheelies. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I wanted to start Jr. drag racing when I was younger, but my dad was extremely protective of me and so nervous about me driving. When Nate was born, my mom [Bobbi] said, ‘OK, that’s fine. But if Alison can’t drive, then neither can Nate. If it’s too dangerous for her, it’s too dangerous for both of them.’ So, I started at 10 in a Jr. Dragster, and it went from there.”
Prose got her first full-size dragster at 17, but she’d long had her eye on the ’69 Camaro that had been her father’s first race car. When he acquired a roadster in the late 2000s, he indicated that he was going to sell the Camaro, but his daughter was having none of it.
“I told him not to, that I wanted to drive it one day, and so he put it in a parts garage and it just sat,” she says. “When we started getting more into NHRA than local bracket racing, he started getting into index racing and collecting cars. By that time, our business [Honey Creek Collison] was booming, and I said, ‘Let’s get this Camaro back out of the garage.’ After 10 years of being in the shed, we brought it out.”
Today, Prose greatly enjoys racing the vintage Camaro in Super Street, as well as her Super Comp dragster. She has also spent time in the family’s Super Gas roadster. She’s more than a driver, though. Part of the deal is that she tends to her race cars. While her grandfather, father, and brother are very active on the mechanical side of things, Prose is a little less knowledgeable but proud of the fact that she continues to learn.
“I’m definitely not building the engines – but in our family, if you’re not working on the race cars, you’re not driving them,” says Prose. “I’m working on them, and I’m learning, but I don’t know near as much as my brother and my dad. I want to be hands-on, do all the maintenance on my cars, and have a good understanding of what happened if something were to break.
“I think that’s what I’m most proud of – my growth and understanding of the sport and the vehicles,” she continues. “I learn new things every single year. I didn’t know anything when I first started, never cared to understand how the Jr. Dragsters worked, and I was absolutely clueless. But it’s different now. I’m happy with what I’m doing, and my family is so tight-knit. I love Sportsman racing, and I don’t think I would want to change anything. With my current and future family, this is always going to be our thing.”
