Jasmine Salinas

• Jasmine Salinas has two career wins in the Top Alcohol class and finished a career-best second in the Top Alcohol standings in 2022.
• She was promoted to a full-time ride in the Top Fuel nitro class last month after team owner/driver (and Jasmine’s dad) Mike Salinas tabbed her to take the seat while Mike recovers from health issues.
• Jasmine is still seeking her first round win after three Top Fuel weekends this year, but is gaining confidence every time out.

Jasmine Salinas knew her time was going to come and that her dream of an NHRA Top Fuel seat was going to become a reality.

She just didn’t know when.

As it turned out, her time came abruptly and a bit earlier than she imagined when her father—long-time NHRA veteran Mike Salinas—announced in March that he would be stepping away from the sport to deal with some health issues.

Team owner/driver Mike’s pick to replace himself in the Scrappers Racing ride was close to home, as he tabbed daughter Jasmine to take the seat. Jasmine says the promotion from her Top Alcohol ride—where she finished second in the points standings in 2022—was totally unexpected.

And it’s been a whirlwind last five weeks or so, to say the least.

“I think I was equally as shocked as everybody else,” Jasmine said. “Last year, my dad mentioned that he might want to take a trip with Mom and that he might have me do one or two races this year, but I definitely wasn’t expecting anything like this.”

Jasmine, who has two career wins in the Top Alcohol class, is still seeking her initial round win after three Top Fuel weekends in the Scrappers Racing dragster this year. She qualified 11th at Pomona, ninth at Phoenix and 13th at the Four-Wide event in Las Vegas. Each race weekend, however, she failed get out of the first round of eliminations.

If there’s one thing eating at her, it’s that she knows she’s still seeking a round win in a car and with a team capable of winning races. Mike is a nine-time winner. He won twice last year and finished fifth in the Top Fuel standings last season.

The big picture, though, is about more important things than adding up round wins and points with the Salinas and the Scrappers Racing families in 2024.

“My dad’s doing really well,” Jasmine said. “I’m really proud of him. He’s been taking care of his health, and I’m not sure how many 60-something year-old men are willing to put everything aside and focus on their health. Really proud of him for doing that for himself and the rest of our family.

“He is hoping to try and come out to the track, hopefully soon. I think a lot of it just depends on how he’s feeling. And I think he’s kind of acknowledging that me driving, meshing pretty well with the team, I don’t think he want’s to come in and throw that off anytime soon.”

Whether or not Mike makes it back into the race car this season, Jasmine is planning on a full-season run in her current Top Fuel car. She says the team planned to run her in the second car a few times this season, and the second operation is ready to spring into action.

“When my dad is ready, he’ll come back into our spare car,” she said. “So I guess we kind of swapped cars.”

The timetable has just moved up. This weekend at Charlotte, it’s back into the deep end for Jasmine.

“My expectations for myself were that I was just going to be going to the gym, working out, and getting ready for this,” she said. “I was hoping to have had a lot more test sessions and seat time. There’s things in the car that I wanted to experience more (before moving up).

“I didn’t have my first full pull until Phoenix, and I had already run in Pomona. There’s little things like that I had hoped to accomplish. But at the same time, I think being thrown into it like this with the crew we had, I never felt like I was free-falling with no idea what I was doing. The crew has been really supportive and helping me keep my head above water.”

For Jasmine, with as little seat time as she’s had in a Top Fuel dragster and the limited practice time available, the world gets to watch her learn and gain confidence in her new weekend ride.

Jasmine Salinas, bottom, takes on the best in the business in the Four-Wide event at Las Vegas.

“I can do the test sessions and the licensing, but for the most part, I’m really learning every time I’m on the track,” she said. “And I’m learning on national television in front of full grandstands, and I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize about someone who reaches the professional level.

“We’re still learning, but we’re just doing it with a massive audience of people judging.”

One of Jasmine’s learning tools is the journal she keeps on race weekends. She’ll jot down things she’s learned about the car or the track, and she also keeps a running diary of her experiences on the road. It’s a way to stay focused, but also a way to stop and smell the roses—or at least the Nitro—along the way of what’s turning out to to be an incredible drag racing journey.

As much as 80% of her journal, she admits, is about the cool memories she’s making with people in the sport she’s always looked up to and admired.

“It still doesn’t feel real that I’m actually doing this,” she says. “I keep having to pinch myself and say, ‘Hey, I’m out here!’ “

Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.