Drag Illustrated Issue 151, December 2019 | Page 30

Dirt
Everything that he did worked. Everything fell
into place really nicely.”
The first few test passes showed the car’s im-
mediate potential, as Salemi clicked it off around
300 feet and posted a 3.70 at 177 mph on the
very first pass. Her minimal reservations about
jumping into a small-tire car started to wash
away as she made more runs and began to real-
ize the Eddie Whalen-owned radial car is just
as much fun – if not more fun – to drive than
the roots-blown “Purple Reign” ’68 Firebird she
runs in Pro Boost.
“The big difference between the two cars is the
way the screw blower doesn’t ever stop pulling,”
Salemi says. “It’s insane. It’ll be funny when I go
back to the roots blower to see the difference. At
the end of the day, every time I got out of that car
I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.”
Salemi qualified No. 2 in the 11-car field, re-
cording a 3.614 at 207.72 to draw a first-round
matchup with Mark Micke and his feared twin-
turbocharged Malibu.
“At that point, I wasn’t really too worried about
who was in the other lane, but at the same time
it’s cool to even qualify for my first Radial vs. the
World race,” Salemi says. “Before we even started
racing, our team got together and said, ‘If we had
to stop right now, we would be happy with our
progress.’ It was an overwhelmingly good experi-
ence this past week.”
Things only got better as Salemi used another
3.61 at 207 to defeat Micke and his 3.99. A consis-
tent 3.62 at 207 followed to beat Mike Decker III,
lining up a competition bye run in the semifinals.
Brothers Jon and Jim took advantage of the
opportunity to push the car to the edge of its
limits. What followed was a remarkable .896
60-foot time, but that’s about as far as it went.
“That was cool, knowing that in the final we
would have to go super-fast, we got a chance to
try something,” Salemi says. “It actually started
to hike the wheels up and the wheelie control
took over and shut the engine off. That set us
up perfectly for the final because we got to try
some stuff and see what we could get away with.”
Waiting for Salemi in the final round was Stevie
“Fast” Jackson, whose recent accomplishments
include the 2019 NHRA Pro Mod world cham-
pionship and Radial vs. the World victories at
the Shakedown Nationals at Virginia Motors-
ports Park and No Mercy 10 at South Georgia
Motorsports Park.
In World Street Nationals competition, Jack-
son qualified No. 4 with a 3.62 and defeated Ziff
Hudson and Brian Markiewicz with a pair of
3.63s in the first two rounds, then used a holeshot
advantage to beat tuning customer Marcus Birt’s
3.57 with a 3.58 in the quickest side-by-side race
in RvW history.
Salemi flipped the script on Jackson in the
final, though, as she left first with a .007 reac-
tion time to Jackson’s .047. Her Mike Stawicki
Racing Engines-powered Camaro held the lead
through the eighth-mile stripe, firing off a 3.583
to Jackson’s 3.585.
“Normally, as soon as I go through the lights I
get a radio call saying how fast I went, if I won,
so on. Well, I got nothing,” Salemi says of the
moment she realized she won. “Typical of my
crew when I win a race – they’re all excited and
celebrating on the starting line. But luckily I had
looked up at the scoreboard and knew I won. I
left the line and never saw him.”
The standout weekend performance was ex-
actly what Salemi and her team needed to fuel
their offseason efforts back at the G-Force Race
Cars shop near Buffalo, New York.
“I know we’re all super excited to keep carrying
on with what we’re doing,” Salemi says. “It really
put our team in a good spot with Eddie and Jim
and Jon and Mike Stawicki, everybody who has
a part in this and helped us get this car finished.
For the last few weeks, the guys at the shop, and
Evan and Lucas, they all put everything on the
back burner to get this race car finished so we
can go out and prove that we know what we’re
doing. The whole deal that happened this week
just makes all of it worth it and pumps us up to
want to keep going and get to the next race.”
The Camaro, dubbed “Purple Reign’s Sidepiece,”
will make its next appearance in the Liberty’s
Gears booth at the PRI Show in Indianapolis
next month. It will return to the track in January
for the U.S. Street Nationals at Bradenton Mo-
torsports Park in Florida, with additional plans
to run at Duck X Productions’ Lights Out and
Sweet 16 3.0 races at South Georgia.
“After that we’ll carry on with radials or maybe
put big tires on it for a couple races,” Salemi adds.
“You never know.”
Salemi will also continue to campaign her
“Purple Reign” Firebird in PDRA Pro Boost com-
petition in 2020.
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I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Issue 151
MELANIE SALEMI