It's a conversation Mike Salinas is willing to have but to a point.

For a while now, Mike Salinas has been rumored to have an interest in purchasing Auto Club Raceway at Famoso. There are only rumors at this point.

If and when Salinas does purchase a drag strip, he's got a plan in place.

Sunday, at the inaptly named NHRA Winternationals, Top Fuel racer Justin Ashley beat every opponent masterfully, two of whom were past NHRA series champions, leading up to the final round. However, it was the one he couldn't see but could feel, which got the best of him prior to Sunday's final round.

On paper, Ashley should have been out of competition in the second round and then in the semi-finals. But drag races aren't run on paper. Headed into the final round, Ashley had a car capable of going toe-to-toe with Leah Pruett, who was making her mark just as impressively on the other side of the ladder.

As Ashley and Pruett had their dragsters pushed to the waterbox, Ashley just didn't appear to be right. One hour earlier, there appeared to be nothing wrong.

As the saying goes, “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”

That definitely applies to what the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, near, Dallas, has planned for its FallNationals.

The FallNationals are scheduled for Oct. 7-10, but that’s only part of the festivities that will be taking place at the facility during the “Stampede of Speed.

The track recently announced a huge expansion and rebranding of the NHRA Texas FallNationals.

For over 50 years, the family New who runs Firebird Raceway outside of Eagle, Idaho, a suburb of Boise, has been entertaining fans throughout the Western United States with the Nightfire Nationals. Firebird Raceway is one of the few facilities in the United States owned and operated by the same family and management team since its inception in 1968.

The family's late patriarch, Bill New, built the facility in its current location. As Bill New told the late Steve Evans in an interview, "The place started out as a drag strip and a trout farm. Well, unfortunately, the trout died. However, the racetrack has grown and prospered."

Tony Stewart has become familiar with the Camping World Drag Racing Series during the past year, attending events, asking questions, and meeting the sport’s innovators.

He has attended Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School at Bradenton, Fla., and gone back for a second lesson, learning to drive a Super Comp dragster and a Top Alcohol dragster.

And the sprint-car, championship-car, and NASCAR Cup veteran has learned the finer points, if not yet mastered, the handling of an 11,000-horsepower Top Fuel dragster at perhaps the most pristine racetrack on the circuit, The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Multi-time Funny Car champion Matt Hagan took exception to a John Force "double-bulbing," and following their first-round match at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, didn't have an issue calling out the 16-time champion.

The two exchanged not-so-pleasant pleasantries in the shutdown area following Force's victory.

FoxSports's Amanda Busek, who was a witness to the incident, said Hagan approached Force and asked, "What was that about? You're a better driver than that."

​“Tombstone” Tommy Gray scored a major win at the inaugural Northeast Outlaw Pro Mod Challenge at Empire Dragway over the weekend, earning his first Pro Mod win since 2018. The Pro Mod veteran defeated New York’s own Melanie Salemi in a side-by-side 3.60-second final round. 
 
“I've had five other national event wins in my career, and that was close to a topper,” said Gray, who won his first Pro Mod national event in 1994. “After all the adversity I've been through in the last year and a half, between getting injured and my crash last year and struggling, it was definitely a morale booster for me and my two guys. It's just us three: Wayne Waldmann, Lonnie Pass and myself. I’ve been at it a long time, but gosh, we needed that.”

If the term Familial Hypercholesterolemia, or FH, doesn’t sound familiar, Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Jianna Salinas can explain. Her friends Scott Radabaugh and his 15-year-old daughter Chloe, who like Salinas are from Northern California’s Bay Area, know all about it. 

FH is an inherited condition, one not exactly rare but definitely underdiagnosed, that results in high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C, “the bad cholesterol”) and increased risk of premature cardiovascular disease in men and women. 

Salinas has joined the Radabaugh family in raising awareness of the condition as they have bonded through motorcycle racing and their steeliness in overcoming adversity. For Jianna Salinas, the struggle has been to triumph over her spill from her bike during eliminations at Chicago, shake off criticism from people who know virtually nothing about her, and improve her riding in NHRA competition. For Chloe Radabaugh, the adversity could be life-threatening if untreated, and for her father it’s a daily task to maintain regained health after suffering a heart attack and undergoing quadruple bypass surgery at age 34.

If California’s Auto Club Raceway at Pomona were a baseball diamond, the Top Fuel box score from Sunday’s Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals might look something like this:

It is the kind of race where legends are made.

And it is the kind of race people will talk about for ages.