The quarter-mile Federated Auto Parts Raceway in Pevely, MO was one of his favorite tracks to go. It showed, winning there three times. He recounts winning his last race at the track in 2010 with a broken hand.
“I had a metal plate and 10 screws,” he said. “I crashed on a Saturday. They did the operation on a Monday and I raced that Friday. I finished second that night and then Pevely the next night, we won that. I remember that night in victory lane crying like a baby [my hand] hurt so bad. But you don’t even think about it. You just got out and you do it. Pevely has definitely been good to me.”
He also remembers having one of the best cars of his career at the track in 2007 while driving the No. 9 car for Kasey Kahne Racing. He set quick time and powered his way around traffic for 40 laps to win the race.
“When you have cars like that it’s really fun, because you don’t get many opportunities to have cars like that, that were perfect,” Saldana.
Saldana admits he’d love to be full-time with the World of Outlaws, again. However, if a team were to offer him that opportunity right now, he said he’d probably turn it down. He doesn’t feel he could make the sacrifices needed to do so and put his focus 100 percent into it at the moment. For now, he’s enjoying spending time with his family, racing Micro Sprints with his oldest son and building oil tanks for Sprint Car teams.
At the beginning of the year Saldana acquired Godfrey Autosport’s Spike Oil Tank division – now branded under Saldana Racing. It’s a small business he runs himself that keeps him busy and keeps him firmly in the racing world – building oil tanks for teams like KKR and Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing.
“I love it,” Saldana said. “It’s just me and a welder and that’s it. I don’t want to get to a point where I need to hire anybody. I like to be hands-on and doing it myself. I enjoy fabricating. I’ve always done that with my own cars.
“You’re not going to make a million dollars at it. At least you can make enough money that makes its own way, put a nice product out there. And teams like Ford and Andy Durham (owner of Durham Racing Engines) are putting them on Donny Schatz’s car and Tony Stewart’s car, so, I mean, to me, it just made sense. It was the right thing at the right time.”
While the passion and urge to get back behind the wheel of a Sprint Car still brews inside Saldana, he models the reverence of his career after how his father, Joe Saldana, looks at his own racing career.
“He won the Knoxville Nationals (in 1970). He goes and runs USAC full-time. He goes and runs the Indy 500. He ran CART for a season. He made it to the echelon,” Saldana said. “He made it to the highest of the high and it got to the point where, OK, Roger Penske and all of these guys are coming in and it’s a money thing and the low buck teams are getting pushed to the side. He felt like, ‘I made it to the top and I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to do it anymore if I can’t race at this level.’ I think that’s the same for me.
“The Outlaws are the cream of the crop. That’s it. That’s where you want to be. That’s my mentality. Either I want to do it right or I don’t want to do it at all. That’s where I made it to, and I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to race locally or just race to race. I want to race with Donny Schatz and Brad Sweet and these guys. The best of the best. If I can’t, I don’t want to do it.”
To Saldana, a driver is only as good as their last race. Judging by his last race, his racing days may not be completely over, yet.