After more than a month out of the driver\u2019s seat, Top Fuel pilot Jasmine Salinas proved that the Valley Services Scrappers Racing team should not be taken lightly despite their part-time status in the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series. The talented up-and-comer qualified in the top half of the competitive Top Fuel field this weekend at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals but fell to Shawn Langdon in the opening round of eliminations. Nevertheless, Salinas is leaving Bristol Dragway with gratitude for the valuable seat time as she continues to seek full-time sponsorship.\u00a0
\u00a0
With a newly revamped track surface, qualifying kicked off with a lot of tire smoke across the nitro categories on Friday with only a handful of drivers making full passes. By Saturday, Scrappers Racing crew chiefs Todd Okuhara and Adem Cave found the right combination, tuning Salinas to a powerful pass of 3.822 seconds at 326.00 mph, the best of the session, in her 12,000-horsepower machine.
\u00a0
Salinas began eliminations from the No. 8 spot on the ladder to face No. 9 qualifier Langdon. The Valley Services Scrappers Racing dragster ran into issues early in the run and Salinas ceded the win to Langdon.\u00a0
\u00a0
\u201cOverall, it was a good weekend, especially after sitting out for over a month,\u201d said Salinas. \u201cConsistency is especially key when you\u2019re a part-time team. Any seat time we can get is valuable, so we were glad to be back out in Bristol and racing with NHRA. Being a full-time Mission Foods Series driver is still the goal and we\u2019re headed in the right direction. We were able to get some good data. Because they just resurfaced the track, it felt like we were learning it all over again, along with everyone else. Q3 was a really great reminder, for everyone else out there as well as ourselves, of what we are capable of doing. Getting the low E.T. of that round was really good. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve qualified up that high for a long time. When everyone else is on their ninth start of the season and we\u2019re only in our third, sometimes it feels like we\u2019re playing catch up. We\u2019re going to keep working on it.\u201d
\u00a0
The Scrappers Racing crew will head to the Columbus area next weekend to compete in the IHRA\u2019s Triple Crown event at National Trail Raceway in Hebron, Ohio. Salinas will be joined by her father and Scrappers Racing team owner, Mike Salinas, who will be charging down the lanes in a Top Fuel dragster for the first time in over two years.<\/p>\n
The post Strong Qualifying Run Highlights Jasmine Salinas\u2019 Return to NHRA Competition in Bristol<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After more than a month out of the driver\u2019s seat, Top Fuel pilot Jasmine Salinas proved that the Valley Services Scrappers Racing team should not be taken lightly despite their part-time status in the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series. The talented up-and-comer qualified in the top half of the competitive Top Fuel field this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}