TheHOTTEST2018
ou hungry?” Melanie Salemi asks. Having just completed the four-hour drive from Cleveland to G-Force Race Car’ s Buffalo, New York-area shop, followed by a six-hour photoshoot, photographer Cole Rokosky and I responded to Salemi’ s question, nearly in unison, with a hearty“ Absolutely!” The three of us clear out of the small garage space occupied by Salemi’ s Roots-blown’ 68 Firebird affectionately known as“ Purple Reign”, snaking through a short, narrow hallway lined with various chassis tabs and accessories before ending up back in the main chassis fabrication area. Salemi’ s brother-in-law Jim is performing some maintenance work on a center section. Her husband and tuner, Jon, is double-checking a shipment of parts scheduled to go out to one of his Resolution Racing Services customers on Monday. It’ s quittin’ time here in Tonawanda, a Buffalo suburb that is, at this time in early January, as cold as it is fun to say. Jim finishes up what he’ s working on and heads home, while Melanie, Jon, Cole and I bundle up and prepare to brave the 2-degree weather in search of tacos and margaritas.
We pile into Jon’ s pickup truck, where the stereo is blasting tunes from Royal Blood’ s eponymous debut album. He turns down the volume as I begin to ask Melanie about her first season in the Professional Drag Racing Association’ s Pro Boost class in 2015. Since Salemi is embarking on a planned full season in the E3 Spark Plugs NHRA Pro Mod Series presented by J & A Service, it seems like an appropriate place to start the conversation. She earned her first Pro Boost win in just her fourth event, one race after debuting“ Purple Reign”. With the NHRA Gatornationals, which will be her second NHRA Pro Mod appearance, just weeks away, one must wonder if a similar early victory is possible in the shark-infested waters of the NHRA Pro Mod scene.
“ Our first win( in Pro Boost) came super-fast, so it was unexpected,” she says.“ It took me a long time to win a Top Dragster race. Obviously, you go to every race prepared to win, but I thought it would be maybe tougher to do. But with these guys behind me, it was easy.”
She’ s referring to Jon and Jim, the leaders of the family-based team. The brothers grew up racing together and eventually banded together with Mike Stawicki, who now provides the horsepower for Salemi’ s Firebird. That trio’ s time racing together laid the groundwork for what would become Melanie’ s win at PDRA Dragstock VII in Rockingham, North Carolina.
“ Rockingham was kind of a crazy situation,” Jon says.“ We had been close a couple other times with Mike driving. We knew we had the capability. That day at Rockingham, it just all came together.”
An emotional celebration followed as the Canadian-born driver and her team paraded back up the return road, basking in the cheers from the crowd that had toughed it out through a long day in the sweltering Carolina heat to witness this moment.
“ People were just stopping us and stopping us,” Melanie stories.“ I remember Denise Tutterow stopping me, jumping up and down with me, and I said,‘ Oh Denise, I have to stop; I’ m getting so overheated, I’ m going to pass out!’ I was so excited, but it was so hot and I just remember getting that lightheaded feeling. It was a crazy feeling.”
A sobering DNQ at the next race at Virginia Motorsports Park cooled down the situation like a splash of cold water. Problems plagued“ Purple Reign” all weekend until the final qualifying session, when Salemi laid down a good-but-notgood-enough run, coming up just a couple thousandths short of the 16-car field.
“ And it was the first race nobody had ever broken at,” she laughs.“ I was in the 17th spot, going around the pits like,‘ Are you guys gonna race? Are you guys gonna race?’ Everyone’ s like,‘ Uhh, yeah.’ Come on, come on!”
A strong sophomore season followed in 2016 as Salemi reached the final round at two PDRA races and an event at Ontario, Canada’ s Grand Bend Motorplex. She finished the season third in PDRA Pro Boost points, a feat she repeated in 2017 on the strength of a win at Darlington and a runner-up finish at the GALOT fall race.
As a smaller team racing in the stacked Pro Boost field, two Top 3 points finishes is a big deal. Finishing ahead of Salemi was young rookie Ty Tutterow out of the three-car GALOT Motorsports camp, who secured second place behind Jose Gonzales and the tuning-talent-rich Pro Line Racing team.
“ To me, personally, it’ s a huge accomplishment,” Jon says.“ I don’ t want to sit here and cry about not having enough funding, because we do have enough funding to race, okay? But our funding doesn’ t allow us to do the R & D that we want to do, or have tons of extra parts or go out and get the next whiz-bang thing for the next race. It takes us a little bit longer to get that.
“ Companies like Liberty Gears, Quick Drive and Neal Chance, then Eddie Whelan from Al-Lee Installations – all these companies and people believed in us like we believed in ourselves. Thank God, we proved ourselves like we knew we could.”
The Salemis also endorse a host of performance parts manufacturers, whether it’ s through branding on Melanie’ s race car and fire suit or through Jon’ s Resolution Racing Services. Companies like
68 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 130