Jasmine Salinas admittedly is “terrified” of public speaking.

But the NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster driver, through her distinguished video documentary “Five Foot 280,” has been a global ambassador for drag racing – and, maybe more importantly, a strong advocate for women in every walk of life.

The film, a joint venture with videographers/producers Joshua Harding and Matt Klug which runs for just four minutes, 44 seconds, offers a brief glimpse of this paradoxical 28-year-old powerhouse who is at once shy and self-assured, low-profile but principled.

The daughter – and former crew member – of Top Fuel racer Mike Salinas and an aspiring nitro-fueled dragster driver herself, Jasmine Salinas discovered more of herself through the experience that has broadcast her personal story coast to coast.

“Five Foot 280” – named for Salinas’ height and the speed at which her race car travels on the quarter-mile – was selected for the SCAD Savannah, Austin, Sidewalk, Alexander Valley, and SF Shorts film festivals and has been nominated for Best Documentary Short by the London-based International Motor Film Awards – all before she was permitted to debut it publicly the first week of November.

The project began with connections through her 9-to-5 job at San Francisco and actually had no particular agenda to advance. But through the process, Salinas shaped her message and gave voice to her desire to empower others.

Her daily job is at global design company IDEO, an incubator of human-centered design. In general, IDEO (pronounced EYE-dee-oh)  focuses on creative solutions (products, services, environments) to everyday needs that marry technology with innovative thought.  For example, it developed for Apple the first usable computer mouse – and the basic mechanism that’s used in all styles of the item today. 

Salinas is a leadership and studio coordinator at IDEO.  “I support the partnership levels of IDEO, as well as two of the design studios we have there. It’s amazing, and I’m incredibly fortunate and grateful to be working there,” she said. “We’ve been working remotely since March. Before COVID, I loved waking up on Mondays and was sad on Fridays to leave, because having that constant inspiration around you  and people pushing you and challenging your thoughts and building up on that it was always really exciting to be around that type of energy.

 

 

“At IDEO, we have our monthly lunch meetings. One Monday out of the month, everyone shuts down and we all eat lunch together. And during this lunch, they invite people to share about their side hobbies and gigs. It’s interesting – a lot of these designers have their own businesses on the side and really fun projects they’ve been working on. So in August they invited me to do a quick, five-minute share with the entire community,” Salinas said.

“I did the share, and immediately after I was done, Josh [Harding] ran into me in the hallway and found me and started sharing about all of his work that he has done. He has created some documentaries and films before, and he said he would be interested in trying to create something with me,” she said. “We scheduled a couple of conversations. I gave them my race schedule, and they decided to fly to Las Vegas in October and just start filming.”

Both Harding and Klug were connected though IDEO. Harding Josh is a principal designer there (as was his wife), and Klug is a creative director at ad agency Eleven in San Francisco, and his wife is a designer at IDEO.  So they all had worked together on previous occasions.

“So it all worked out really great to have them come on board,” Salinas said.

“At the beginning, we didn’t have a specific story or message that we were trying to share,” Salinas said. “We just knew that there was something within all of this that we would find eventually. We just started filming, and then later the story kind of came about.

“They asked me if I had a message I want to give. I said, ‘Honestly, I don’t know. Let’s just see what happens.’ So we did all the filming, and then he wanted to do the voice-over for a lot of the scenes. They created a bunch of interview questions. For three days, we spent every night going through these questions and recording the answers. After analyzing all my responses, and cutting through it,” she said, “we kind of realized that there was kind of this recurring theme of overcoming your fears and overcoming challenges on and off the track. That was something I trying to pass on, hopefully to women – to anybody, really, but especially to women.

“I’m 28. I’ll be 29 in January,” Salinas said. “And I just realized that there are still a lot of women who are afraid of a lot of things in the world and feel like they need permission to go and do something. And I’ve done a lot of reflecting and have realized that a lot of women are conditioned and trained and taught at a young age to see a lot of the dangers in the world. And I realize that I was really fortunate because my dad kind of raised us like he was raising boys. Anytime I was afraid to do something, he would still push me: ‘Just try it once. Just do it. Just go out and try it.’

“To this day I’m still scared,” she said. “People see it [her driving a race car] and they’re shocked and amazed. And I think there’s this misconception that because I do this thing, which is racing, I must be fearless [and be] this big, crazy adrenaline junkie. But honestly, there’s a lot of things I’m afraid of in this world. There’s a lot of things I’m terrified of. I’m scared of snakes.  I’m scared of skydiving. I wouldn’t get on a motorcycle. What I realized is that even though I have these fears, I’ve tried not to let them hold me back. And I think that’s something that a lot of people, especially young girls, aren’t taught, that it’s OK to be afraid of something. That doesn’t mean you have to totally avoid it.

“Just like public speaking – I’m terrified of getting up in front of people and talking. I’m terrified of it. I have massive stage fright. I’m super-shy, super-awkward, and I get nervous, and I start feeling my nervousness come about, which makes me more nervous,” she said. “But it’s still something I push myself to do. And I’ve noticed that after every time I’ve tried something just once that scares me, it becomes less scary to me.”

The same goes for drag racing, Salinas said.

“Honestly, I was afraid, I was terrified to start. I wanted to do it, but I was terrified of the speed. I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of not being good enough. Would I have enough experience? But after my first year of doing it,” she said, “every time I’d get in that car and every time I get out at the top end, I was like, ‘Wow! I just did that!’ It’s like ‘What else can I do in this world that scares me?’”

In the film, Salinas makes the point that “even though I’m just five-foot-two, the fact that I can drive this 3500-horsepower, fire-breathing monster, just doing something that’s the almost impossible, that just makes everything else in this world feel possible for you. It’s like nothing else can limit you.”

She also said, “That sweet, little, tiny Jasmine that everybody always sees on the outside, she’s dead right at that moment [at the starting line]. She’s this alter ego: aggressive, loud, extremely big Jasmine comes out, and it’s this person that I feel like I can only be when I’m in that car.”

 

 

When the project was finished, she said, “It was something that I feel so fortunate and grateful to have this opportunity to have this hobby where it’s something that empowers me. And I hope I can utilize it and maybe pass on some sort of message. We went through all this when we were filming, and we realized that was the message that ultimately we wanted to share subtly – and if it was picked up, that’s great. If not, maybe it’s a fun film to watch.”    

“It moved really fast. I think the film was done in January. They brought in a bunch of other designers and editors to help get it done. We spent all of our evenings after work – we would get together and go over the film and edit it. We were getting ready to release it March 8, which was International Woman’s Day. We had this whole thing planned out, then at the same time COVID was starting to get more serious over here. We decided to hold off, because it didn’t feel right to be releasing a promotional, personal project. The following week, the Bay Area went into shutdown, and we were sent home from work,” she said.     

Salinas has been living back home with her parents and sisters (including Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Jianna Salinas) since quarantining started, and, she said, “It’s been so fun.  We’ve spent a lot of family time together, which was nice. I realized that even though we were racing together, we still wouldn’t see each other that much. We’d all be with our different teams and all traveling separately. So this year was the first time in many years that I got to spend some good, quality time with my family. And we’ve done everything together.”

Together they celebrated the news of “Five Foot 280” being accepted into one film festival, then another and another. 

“It was really exciting. I never submitted anything to a film festival. We were sitting around in March, trying to figure out what to do. We didn’t want it to live just on Instagram and Facebook, so one of them thought about submitting it to a few film festivals, just to see,” Salinas said. “And honestly, we weren’t expecting anything. We said, ‘Let’s just try it. Worst case scenario, they’ll just say no. We’ll just see what happens.’

“They submitted it to all these film festivals, and we were accepted into six. It was really exciting. It kind of shocked me. It was exciting to see that so many people were excited about the film. I wasn’t expecting that, honestly. I was looking at it as ‘This is just a small side thing we’re doing for fun,’ and it turned out that they got a lot of really great feedback, asking for more, because it was super-short.

“Because we had been accepted into the film festivals,” she said, “you’re not supposed to release your film. You have to keep it secret, just in case it becomes a contender for an award. It was interesting – I had never heard of that before. If we had gone on and shared it, they would have kicked us out of the film festival.”

Salinas said, “We weren’t expecting to win anything. We figured just being part of it and having that exposure and being featured alongside other amazing storytellers was more than we expected. We were just happy to be there. And as each film festival would pass, we would find out we were accepted into another one and then another one. It ended up being this project we were keeping quiet for about seven months until the last film festival said we could finally release and share it.”

She had to get used to being filmed.

 

 

“I enjoyed it. Being in front of the camera was weird, honestly. I kept running away from them,” she said with a laugh. “I did enjoy having the opportunity to articulate my story and my experiences in a way that could hopefully connect with other people, especially young women, both in and out of drag racing. I know a lot of people have been asking for more, something longer than five minutes. But actually,  I am hoping that my sister Jianna, that we can get a film going for her. I think her story is absolutely amazing. Her journey is so incredible and so inspiring. And I would love to work with Josh and Matt again. And I’m hoping that something might be coming out for Jianna in the future.”

Her sister is game for it, she said.

“She saw my film, and she was like, ‘Oh my gosh! I want one now! It’ll be so cool!’”

Salinas’ documentary hasn’t claimed any awards so far, but the International Motor Film Awards have been delayed because the presentations were designed to take place at an in-person ceremony at London. “Five Foot 280” has been nominated for Best Documentary Short, along with “Ford Mustang – Making The Mach-E,” “The Ferrari F40: Enzo’s Greatest,” and a tribute to Sir Stirling Moss.  Other nominees in the category are “The Lawnmower Men” (about a British endurance race with participants competing on lawnmowers), “You Olive Once” (about a custom-built 1969 Porsche 911 STR), “1989 Vanagon Westfalia – Almost Like Home,” and “Cooper.”

While Salinas’ future in filmmaking remains undetermined, she’s certain she wants to race again after her family’s entire Scrappers Racing team sat out the 2020 season.

“I’m excited to be back next year. I can’t wait,” she said.

To show just how driven she is to master what’s before her, Salinas studied Mandarin Chinese for four years at the University of San Francisco. It wasn’t her major, but it definitely demanded much of her brainpower. Modestly, she says she hasn’t had a chance to practice the language conversationally in quite a while and at the moment “is, beyond the basic level, pretty bad.”

However, she was given the option of learning Japanese or Chinese and was urged to study the former because it reportedly was easier. But Salinas opted for the more challenging course – and it was a challenge, for sure. “I cried myself to sleep every night when I was studying during those four years. But it feels good afterward.”

And she can share, with women and men alike, that that’s how it feels when you’re facing and neutralizing your fears.

 

Five Foot 280 from Joshua Harding on Vimeo.

Christmas is coming. Check out our quality apparel produced by @gosvaink - Make sure you purchase the right kind of gift at https://t.co/QR7z0rKzRO. pic.twitter.com/RDFp4fJ5xk

— Competition Plus (@competitionplus) December 2, 2020