Mike Salinas knows first-hand that a Top Fuel dragster can sometimes be a ticking time bomb. He just never figured the one behind the wheel of his Top Fuel dragster was one, too.
Salinas admitted only one time a year, dating back to 2020, he would have an episode where he’d have severe chest pains. Then, they’d subside, and he’d return to work as if nothing happened. A couple more times, Salinas, an admitted seven-day worker, decided it was time to go in and get checked out.
“I went into Stanford University, got checked out, they couldn’t find anything,” Salinas said. “Did tests, did everything, stress tests, CAT scans, everything, and couldn’t find anything at all. And so they kept an eye on it, no enzymes, nothing. Once a year, it happened, and we couldn’t figure it out.”
Then, it happened at the drag strip as Salinas was getting ready to make a run. Strapped into the racecar on Friday at the PRO SuperStar Shootout, the pains hit again with an intensity the previous three experiences didn’t compare to.
“Strapped in the car, Friday night, staging, the first light bulb came on, and it happened,” Salinas explained. “I could feel it, and I’m like, ‘Okay. So I don’t want to make a big scene and make a big fuss about it, so I’ll idle the car down.”
Salinas’ instincts took over, and he nailed the throttle and roared to a 3.69 elapsed time at 336 miles per hour.
“Came off the track, and I didn’t feel good at all,” Salinas said. “I got out of the car, went in the tow vehicle, laid down, returned to the trailer, talked to my wife, and said, ‘I got a problem. We got to get out of here. I’m going to go to the hospital.”
But before he left, Salinas had to discuss something with Todd Okuhara, who noticed Salinas was struggling to get through the conversation. He then asked Salinas what was wrong with him.
Salinas shared his experiences with Okuhara, who handed him a nitroglycerin pill. Instantly, the pain went away, and Salinas knew then he had a serious issue. However, 20 minutes later, everything was good in his world… like the incident never happened.
“I made appointments to go in instead of going in emergency, so I finished that race off,” Salinas said. “I came back home, went to the doctor, nothing. They can’t find anything. And I’m like, ‘Something’s wrong here. There’s no way.”
The doctors tried to convince Salinas that maybe what he had experienced was the result of stress. He didn’t buy into it, offering,
“No, I drive a 338-mile-an-hour race car for fun. It’s not stress.”
Salinas reached out to his friends at the Petersen Museum and friends Robert Reehl and Bruce Meyer, who referred him to one of their specialists.
Salinas was in the doctor’s office for 15 minutes when the physician presented a grim prognosis.
“Hey, you got a problem. Let’s get to the hospital.”
Salinas was in the hospital, and 15 minutes after drawing blood, he was on the operating table. The first thing the doctors did was an angiogram.
That’s when Salinas found out he was a walking time bomb.
“The doctor told me, ‘All your arteries are plugged. Every one of them,” Salinas recalled. “He said, ‘You’re living off of 7% blood flow right now. If you have a heart attack, I cannot save you. So tomorrow morning, we’re going to do open heart surgery on you. This is the procedure. Get your affairs in order, get your attorneys, get everything done, get them over here, and let’s get this worked out. And tomorrow morning, you’re going go in, and you’re going to get taken care of.”
After hours on the table, doctors performed five bypasses and thoroughly cleaned up every organ inside. Salinas had all the signs something was wrong, and only in February 2024 did he take it seriously.
“After the fact, my cardiologist said, for about ten years, I’ve been living off of 7% blood flow,” Salinas revealed. “And we were all wondering, ‘How can you be coherent? How could you think?”
“I have a lot of energy and always did well. I never got tired until the last month when this stuff happened. That’s when I felt tired for the first time in my life. And I told my wife, ‘Man, I’m tired.”
“And she goes, ‘Something’s wrong with you. We’ve been together 46 years, and she’s never heard me say that.”
Heart issues weren’t something Salinas considered, considering he’s always been active outside of his steady work regimen. He didn’t smoke, drink, or do any kind of drugs.
“I work out every day, hundreds of push-ups, hundreds of sit-ups, two miles,” Salinas said. “I do 1500 movements every day with a two-mile walk or run, and I’ve been like this my whole life. Still, to this day, I do that. And it was just one of those things; we were lucky we caught it.”
Once Salinas recovered and decided he wanted to drive a race car again, he didn’t wait for the doctor to declare him fit to return. He proved it right there on the floor of the examining room.
“I told him I’ve been doing hundreds of push-ups every morning to get the chest stronger and doing all this stuff. I did 50 push-ups real quick and showed him, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re good,” Salinas admitted. “We were lucky we caught it, and now I got back in the car at Vegas on Monday, and the cardiologist said, “You’re amazingly fit right now. You’ve done really well.”
Salinas said a big factor in his recovery was staying away from the painkillers prescribed to him.
“I toughed it out because I don’t like the way they made me feel, so all the meds and the blood thinners and everything, I got off of them in half the time because I would not take them,” Salinas said. “And I would say maybe eight weeks, and I was off all meds.
“Today, I take an aspirin and a cholesterol medicine, and that’s all. Nothing else. And I feel real good.”
Just how good did Salinas feel? On his first run back in post-Las Vegas testing, he launched with a .073 reaction and ran a 3.67.
“It went down the track, and my heart felt good,” Salinas said. “Feels good. We’re good. Ready to go. So I’m ready to go for next year. We have a bunch of things in the works, and we just have to finalize them all. Jasmine and myself will be in the cars. We’re going to try to have some fun, and I just want to race her and beat her. And that’s all. Don’t care about everybody else.”
As if running a Top Fuel car isn’t enough of an exclamation mark on his return, Salinas is adamant he plans to race a Pro Stock Motorcycle so he can line up alongside Jianna.
“I need to get a little bit stronger on my legs and my arms, and I want to run the bike, too,” Salinas said. “We have enough of them. I want to run the bike because I’ve always wanted to do that. And then I have a brand new Pro Mod that’s being finished, so I want to try some of this stuff. We’re getting older, and I need to hurry up and finish this before I get too old.”
But at a youthful 63, Salinas shows no signs of slowing down.
“I take care of myself, I really do,” Salinas said. “What I do in one week, it takes people sometimes two, three months to do. But I’m very active in what I do. I’m having fun doing it, so it’s a game for me. It really is. I figured out the survival part of life and just want to make sure that.
“It’s funny; I’ve always been a working person. I love work, and when I don’t have anything going on, I go back to the garbage dump. I wind up at one of the companies on Saturday and Sunday. I enjoy it. I truly enjoy it. I love what we built and what we’re building. We’re spreading out different branches and deciding what states we’re going to open up and do other different things, but I still need to think about enjoying life and spending time with my wife. We’ve been together for 46 years, and we just want to enjoy this time. I mean, you get a second chance, so I feel pretty happy about it.”
And just think, Salinas was pretty overwhelming with seven percent blood flow. Imagine what he can do with 100-percent. The racing world is about to find out.
