Straight Line Motorsports

09/12/2026

The Story Behind the Dates

If you look closely at our race car, you'll see something that isn't immediately obvious.

Ghosted throughout the graphics are nearly 9,000 dates.
They aren't race dates.
They aren't milestones.
And they aren't decoration.
Each date represents a law enforcement officer lost somewhere in the United States—in the line of duty or by suicide—since 1990.
Nearly 9,000 individual dates. Nearly 9,000 lives.
We chose dates rather than names intentionally. From a distance, they become part of the design of the car. But when you get closer, you begin to realize what you're actually seeing.

And that's when the car changes.
It stops being just a 30-foot blown-alcohol dragster and becomes a reminder of the human cost of a profession dedicated to protecting others.
Some of those losses happened in a single terrible moment. Others came after years of carrying things most people will never see or experience.

We include both because we believe both matter.

Honoring those who serve means remembering those we've lost. But it also means doing everything we can to support the men and women who are still here—the officers, families, coworkers and agencies carrying on after them.

That's why the dates travel with us every time this car goes down the track.

We race with purpose.
Committed to Those Who Serve. Driven to Win.
hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag

09/02/2026

08/30/2026

A cool shot of the dragster on the very first launch at our debut outing at Darlington Dragway back in March. It's a great depiction the physics involved and how these cars actually work. Since there's no suspension, the chassis flexes and acts like a lever to help plant the rear tires as the sidewall wrinkles and bites into the racing surface.

You can also see the front wheels lift off the ground and slightly twist from the torque of the engine. Ideally that motion would continue as the car accelerates and the tires grow as it continues down the track. But in this case, we overpowered the available grip that the tires could handle based on the tune-up, and it smoked the tires.

We're learning more each time out and have a deep appreciation for just how complex these cars are and what it takes to compete at such a high level. They're a tremendous amount of work and can be incredibly frustrating and physically exhausting for a two person, husband and wife team. This past weekend it took almost 5 hours to service the car in-between qualifying runs in sweltering heat and humidity.

While it may seem that each time out we have one problem after another, this is actually typical for most teams making this kind of horsepower. Even the best, most seasoned teams experience failures more often than not because these car/engines are pushing the level of performance to the max.

However, at the end of the day we know we're not just competing but have a more important mission to spread awareness for Officer safety and mental wellness. Hopefully next time out we'll have another crew member or two to help us out. Any volunteers? Hard work, no pay, but you'll be well fed......when there's actually time to eat! 😲

08/29/2026

The magic hour at Galot Motorsports Park in Benson, NC.

08/29/2026

The Salemi brain trust in action. Jon, Evan, and Lucas using their collective years of expertise to diagnose and resolve an ignition problem. For some reason the motor just wasn't happy and wouldn't make the rpm it needed to run at its full potential. Unfortunately we didnt have the parts on hand to resolve the issue, but we have a plan and will be back soon.

08/29/2026

08/25/2026

Organizations are often born from pain. Someone experiences something devastating, sees a need that others may not see, and turns that experience into purpose. That purpose can become a mission, and that mission can grow into something extraordinarily powerful that changes and even saves lives.
But building an organization around a deeply personal or emotionally charged cause does not make its leaders immune from the very struggles that helped give birth to it.
A title does not inoculate us from mental health struggles. Being a founder, president, executive director, advocate, or the person everyone else turns to does not somehow protect us. In fact, the enormous responsibility of being the face of a mission, carrying the expectations of others, and feeling responsible for an organization and the people it serves can intensify struggles that may already exist beneath the surface.
We never truly know what lies underneath someone’s smile, determination, accomplishments, or relentless drive.
When something unimaginable happens, compassion can coexist with anger. Empathy can coexist with feelings of betrayal. Grief can coexist with questions that may never be fully answered. Those emotions are not mutually exclusive; they are human.
Perhaps one of the lessons for organizations built around emotionally charged causes is that support cannot exist only from the bottom up. It must exist from the top down as well. We need systems that deliberately check on the people doing the checking. A buddy system for leadership. People empowered to ask the founder, the president, the executive director, or the person who always seems strongest: How are you, really?
Nobody should become so synonymous with a mission that we forget there is a human being carrying it.
No one is immune to mental health struggles. No title, accomplishment, reputation, or position changes that reality. And sometimes the people who appear to have the greatest drive and strength are carrying things the rest of us cannot see.
We need to connect more deeply, ask harder questions, listen more carefully, and take far less for granted.
Sometimes the people holding everyone else up need someone making sure they are still standing.

Stephanie Samuels, MA, MSW, LCSW
CopLine®️, Founder/Director

08/23/2026

Got all the pieces and parts back together in the chassis and it fired right up. We discovered a minor fuel leak at the pump but we'll get it fixed up before heading to Galot Motorsports Park next week.