Drag Illustrated Issue 113, September 2016 | Page 83
PHOTOS: JASON SHARP, IAN TOCHER
Jon Salemi takes a brief moment away
from laboring over a pre-elimination-round tune up call during the Street
Car Supernationals (above) to pose for
Drag Illustrated’s cameras at The Strip at
Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Nevada.
Salemi’s wife and uber-successful driver,
Melanie, rockets off the starting line
(below) behind the wheel of her PDRA
Pro Boost ‘68 Pontiac Firebird which, of
course, is tuned by her husband.
Dragster team for the Florida winter series. From
there, Salemi worked from 2007-’10 with Pro
Mod driver Kirk Wilmes on his ‘68 Firebird. The
pair ran the NHRA circuit, and picked up a Pro
Street win at the PSCA Street Car Super Nationals race in Las Vegas, Nevada, in ’08. “Working
with Kirk, it was my first real deal doing things
on my own. I was still a little wrapped up with
September 2016
my brother since it was one of his cars and one
of MSR’s engines, but I went and tuned it myself.”
It was Salemi’s collaboration with Stawicki,
however, that really propelled his name into the
history books. Together, the Resolution Racing
Services/G-Force Race Cars/MSR Performance
team with Stawicki behind the wheel of their
supercharged ’68 Firebird ran 5.97 to become
the ninth member of the DRO 5-second club. The
guys also won the PMRA championship in 2010,
and as a result were one of eight US-based teams
to be invited to Qatar to compete in a special
eight-race ADRL-sanctioned Pro Extreme series.
That same year, Stawicki won the Pro Extreme
class at the Shakedown at E-Town race in New
Jersey, and became the quickest and fastest Pro
Mod in the world when he went 5.73 at 256 mph
in the quarter mile.
Salemi’s tuning skills also helped Paolo Giust
cruise to victory in the 2015 Shakedown at Norwalk race at Ohio’s Summit Motorsports Park,
and picked up a Pro Boost win at the PDRA
Dragstock XII race in 2015 at Rockingham
Dragway in North Carolina with his wife Melanie
driving, as well. Additionally, the husband-andwife team briefly held the national PDRA Pro
Boost elapsed time record in 2016 when they ran
3.78 at 196 mph before rival Kevin Rivenbark
snatched it away.
Despite his in-depth involvement with drag
racing from a very young age, Salemi says he never
tried his hand at driving one of the supercharged
doorslammers he routinely worked on.
“I’ve screwed around at the local eighth mile
in street cars. And my nephews, they’re serious
snowmobile racers and I’ve taken some laps on
a snowmobile—they run 6.40s in the eighth mile
and go over a hundred miles an hour—so I felt
the acceleration. But I’ve never driven like a fast,
fast car. I’ve always wanted to—it was a huge part
of my childhood dreams to drive a race car—but
I missed my calling for that when I was doing
the band.”
In the race shop, Salemi says his inspiration
and motivation can be directly accredited to his
brother, Jim, and to Stawicki. “They both came
from the school of ‘you have to work for what you
get and if you work hard, good things happen’,”
he professes.
Within the greater drag racing community,
it’s the folks who have established themselves as
industry greats based on
their ability to achieve success through perseverance
that Salemi most looks up
to. “Alan Johnson, I don’t
know him personally, but
he worked hard and built
his own parts and was innovative and now he’s a top
manufacturer, successful
business guy, and a great
crew chief. Bill Barrett, too,
would always talk to me
about how they used to do
things without new-school
electronics and fuel management, and I learned
a tremendous amount from him.”
Salemi has found the most useful tool in his
tuning arsenal isn’t available for purchase; instead, he believes that listening and learning are
the best things someone can do. “Pay attention,
because every experience in this sport will teach
you something,” he asserts, knowing he’s amassed
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