Fueling the Passion
Tony Palo
President, T1 Race Development, Inc.
Almost two decades ago, Tony Palo walked into a shop to complain about a set of lowering springs he had purchased. He walked out of the shop as the newest employee at Jotech Motorsports and began an illustrious career first as a Jotech mechanic, then as Crew Chief for Jotech- owner Kenny Tran’s Hot Rod Civic. A few years later, Palo found himself working at Norwood Autocraft building cars for import drag-racing superstars at the height of the import drag-racing years and at the time the first issues of DSPORT Magazine began to appear on newsstands. “Going from Jotech to Norwood was a turning point for me,” Palo comments. “I had the opportunity to step out of the ‘bolt on’ world and go 100-percent into the ‘race world.’”
Palo’s experiences in that world, along with years of accumulated knowledge and experience in fuel- injected racecar building and tuning, prompted him to start Injector Dynamics in 2008. “ID injectors may not be the most important performance part from the past ten years, but they have definitely changed the game in regards to what’s possible in a well- mannered street vehicle,” Palo notes. “The most important part in general has been the evolution and availability of good engine management systems. The best engine and turbo setup in the world is worthless if we can’t manage it properly. The difference between what we thought was the limit between ten years ago and now plays a huge part in why engine management has advanced so much.”
Over the next few years, Palo expects to continue tuning the R35 GT-R platform and anxiously awaits the next-generation Nissan R36 platform, whatever that might be. “We still campaign the Outlaw Integra but we’ve also almost completely shifted focus from Hondas to the GT-R platform. In regards to streetable performance cars, the GT-R is untouchable,” Palo comments. “While I would love to be all over every new potential performance car, I don’t think it’s best for us. We have a limited amount of resources so I believe it’s best to find a market you want to be in and devote 100-percent to being the best in that market.”
In regards to emerging OE technologies and how those will have an effect on the next ten years, Palo replies, “I’m simultaneously not excited about and completely looking forward to more direct-injected platforms. It’s an awesome technology that’s only going to get more common but, like engine management systems ten years ago, the performance aftermarket will be stuck if they can’t control fuel.” He continues, “I know that at some point we have to adopt direct injection to our lineup to further develop it, but the amount of work that it will require is significant, and the reality is that our staff is working at 95-percent just to keep up with current demands. Time to develop a dedicated DI program is slim, but it will happen.” And with that, Palo commits to continue fueling the performance aftermarket in the years to come.
