You need to progress street race playlist to 50% to unlock the event.
Grinding the 50% in street races takes too long. I suggest going about 25% to level up your ride and then rather complete the drag races to reach the 50% quicker.
Tio races 252 performance points McLaren P1 for 67% of the race progress, then switches to Nissan GT-R, roughly 150-160 performance points. I had no problem beating him with combination of 259pp Maserati MC12 and 166pp Audi TT.