There’s nothing that adds a cherry on top of long summer nights like the smell of gasoline and sound of engines revving. That's why Texas Motor Speedway takes advantage of the season and hosts “Universal Technical Institute Friday Night Drags” for six weeks each summer.
Utilizing the track's pit road, it’s an eighth-mile heads-up race for glory. We showed up early for “Jeep Night” hoping we might catch some amusing action. But, rather than take up strip time, 385 Jeeps, mostly JKs, paraded around the Speedway’s 1.5-mile track before the evening's racing festivities began. While it’s not the usual place that these JKs would be spotted, it’s surely a thrill getting to take a lap around one of the top NASCAR tracks in your daily driver.
As the sun set, drag racing electrified the Speedway with an eclectic mix of racers. With seven divisions, there’s a place for everyone, and the staging lanes were packed with people who were there to have a good time, from Camaros to GT-Rs and even some black-smoke-blowing diesels. It is Texas, after all.
