2017 Texas Invitational Day 1 Recap and Photo Gallery

The 2017 Texas Invitational kicked off this past Friday, making this the 8th year of head-to-head runway racing between some of the fastest street cars in the world. 

For the uninitiated, the Texas Invitational is a private, invite-only, roll-racing event designed to simulate an interstate “roll-on” type of street race. The races take place from a 60mph rolling start and extend along 1,550-feet of concrete runway at Caddo Mills Municipal Airstrip outside of Dallas, Texas.

Caddo Mills Municipal Airport has been the home to The Texas Invitational since 2010. Unbeknownst to some, this once abandoned army airfield was home to some of the first sanctioned drag races in the Dallas, Texas-area back in the 1950s. Without a doubt, the Texas Invitational (TI) is the pinnacle of high-caliber automotive airfield competition in the United States. Not only was the event novel at the time, it started the trend of airfield racing across the country. TI is now renowned for harvesting the fastest street cars in the world for side-by-side straight line acceleration. TI is guaranteed to provide you with the most unique and challenging driving experience of its kind.

The Texas Invitational field represents one of the most eclectic mix of cars and people street car racing has to offer. Just a few years ago, a 1,000-horsepower daily driver was unheard of – a 2,500-horsepower street car? Basically impossible. Now, though, events like the Texas Invitational are making these incredible feats seem like commonplace. As Amar Sood of Texas Speed Syndicate, the group that organizes the event, admits, TI has become something of a “super bowl of street car racing” – especially for high-horsepower, street-tire-equipped late model performance vehicles and exotics. “This is the epitome of high caliber street car technology,” says Sood. “The event has become very global; we had people flying in from Germany, Puerto Rico, and Kuwait just to watch.”

Over the course of the two days, drivers engage one another in five classes with the King of the Streets category serving as the headlining eliminator. Friday is spent testing and speed indexing, and then eliminations for the RWD and 6-Speed Challenge. Saturday, outside of a last chance speed indexing round, was reserved for the 175 Trap Attack, Pro Trap Attack and King Of the Street eliminations. 

Tony Palo set the bar even higher this year during day 1 of speed indexing as he pulled off a blistering 230-miles per hour pass in just 1500 feet in his T1 Race Development built Nissan GT-R making that the highest trap speed ever recorded at the Texas Invitational. He bested the record by over 10-miles per hour from last year, and come to find out he still had some more power on reserve. Congrats to Tony and the entire T1 Race Development crew on an amazing feat!

Texas Invitational 2017 Day 1 Results

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