Jasmine Salinas has spent much of the 2025 NHRA season proving she is no pushover. A semi-finalist in three of the first four events and a finalist at the NHRA Vegas Four-Wide Nationals, her determined approach showed she was capable of hanging with drag racing’s toughest class. Then, just as momentum built, her team was sidelined.
Salinas’ opportunity to drive full-time came in 2024 when her father, Mike, was forced out of the seat by a heart issue at the NHRA Gatornationals.
She stepped in and quickly proved herself in Top Fuel, where opportunities are rare and scrutiny is constant. But when Scrappers Racing announced earlier this season that it would run part-time, speculation followed.
“So many people have been out here supporting us,” Salinas said after a first-round win at Indianapolis. “On the other side, there’s a good amount of people that have been saying, ‘Scrappers Racing is done. Scrappers Racing is over.’ There have been some teams that are asking us to scrub tires for them. You know what? We didn’t come here to scrub tires. We came out here to go rounds.”
The rumors, she admitted, weighed heavily. Fans, rival teams, and social media all questioned whether Scrappers Racing would continue. In the absence of official updates, outsiders filled the void with stories of a team shutting its doors.
“I know when we first put out our announcement that we were going to be sitting out part-time and we didn’t really have a specific date that we knew and we’d be able to come back, obviously people are going to kind of make their assumptions,” Salinas said. “But then as the season was progressing and we were still remaining quiet, trying to figure out when we’d be able to get back out, obviously people were left to make their own assumptions, which is understandable.”
Behind the scenes, however, the team was far from shutting down. Work continued inside the Scrappers Racing shop in California, with family members, friends, partners, and past crew members all contributing. Salinas said the silence didn’t mean inactivity—it meant preparation.
“There was so much going on behind the scenes in our race shop at home back in California trying to get me back out there and the amount of effort that was going in,” she said. “It was so much on everybody’s side, from my family’s side to our friend’s side, extended family, people we’ve worked with in the past, partners, everybody around us, even within the sport as well, trying to figure out how to get me back out there. And it’s really been a group effort.”
Perseverance, Salinas said, comes from her upbringing. Both of her parents emphasized resilience, though each defined it in their own way. She credits those lessons for helping her push through a season where progress seemed uncertain.
“That definitely does come from both my mom and my dad equally,” she said. “They’ve had their own versions of what they would define as strength and resilience, and they’ve instilled those values and how they think that you can show up as strong and tough and resilient. Having my family’s support and encouragement throughout these times has really helped keep me motivated and pushed me going.”
The patience she learned at home also helped when critics weighed in online. In her early years as a racer, the negativity from people who had never driven a dragster cut deep. Over time, she realized that respect had to come from herself and her peers.
“When I first started racing, I think it bothered me, but as I’ve progressed more in my career and as I’ve also learned and grown and accomplished things within my very small and short career so far, there’s one thing I’ve learned is that none of this is easy and nobody can just jump into one of these cars and do what we do, let alone do it every single weekend, like the professionals that have been doing it for so long,” Salinas said.
She said it helped to keep perspective. Only a small group of people in the world drive Top Fuel cars competitively. That exclusivity, she said, makes her job both a privilege and a responsibility.
“There’s maybe less than 20 people in the world, they get to do what we get to do every weekend,” Salinas said. “It’s a very huge privilege to be able to do what we do, but then also understanding that not everyone’s going to fully understand, and they don’t need to understand. The only respect that I should be seeking is for myself and from the peers that I am hoping to race with alongside.”
Salinas’ time out of the car stretched longer than she anticipated. She kept track of the days—139 of them—between starts. For a young driver eager to learn, that gap felt enormous.
“Honestly, it felt like an entire season for me, and it’s been a roller coaster of emotions of wishing I could be back in that car not knowing who I am anymore, and then trying to redefine who I am outside of driving the race car,” Salinas said. “I don’t know how to go back to a nine-to-five office job that I used to have. I don’t think I can do that. And I love the people that make up this sport and the passion and the fans as well.”
Her return came at the NHRA U.S. Nationals, a race the team specifically targeted because of its extra qualifying session. With veteran tuner Joe Barlam joining the operation and a reorganized team, the added laps were invaluable. Still, she knew one weekend would not be enough to erase the months of missed seat time.
That’s why she added another stop to the calendar. This weekend, Salinas will race at the IHRA Outlaw Nitro Series event in Columbus, Ohio. For her, the race is less about chasing a trophy and more about making passes, collecting data, and giving her team the chance to learn in competition.
“We knew we needed to do some more testing and we knew there was going to be this race within a very quick traveled distance from us here based in Brownsburg, and so we thought we’d kill two birds with one stone, knock out some testing, get all of us a little more familiar with the car over these next two days, and then, yeah, also at the same time maybe try to get paid to do some testing with it,” Salinas said.
The approach reflects both her mindset and her team’s goals. For Salinas, every lap is a chance to improve, whether in NHRA or IHRA competition. After 139 days away, she said she cannot afford to waste a single opportunity.
“Yes, there is always going to be some elements of testing,” Salinas said. “Going from my rookie year where the car did not go down 70 percent of the time to then 2025, the start of this year, we had four races and suddenly we have yet to have a first round loss. We were pretty much going to the semi-finals or going to the final round, all of these five races that I’ve done so far, including Indy.”
Each round has been part of the learning curve. Even while sidelined, the team worked to adjust to changes from her rookie season, including weight adjustments and other technical factors. This year, Salinas said, they have finally begun to see what the car responds to.
“We were very successful, but then with each lap that we had, which we were fortunate enough to be going round, we were learning so much more and trying to figure out what could we adjust, what can we tweak to make this car a lot more consistent, a lot more faster?” she said. “Figure out what it liked, because we pretty much had a brand new car this year with some changes that we made during the off season because we struggled a lot when I first came in my rookie year with all of the new weight changes that we had, weight changes with the driver, and we finally had it figured out.”
Now, the goal is simple: keep learning. With her NHRA return underway and IHRA competition providing extra laps, Salinas said the mission is to get as much time in the car as possible.
“We’ve basically had five races this year to kind of learn what this new car likes,” she said. “That’s where our focus is, and every run still teaches us something.”
