The short, sharp roar of a dragster, a sound as high-decibel and thrilling as a jet fighter launching from an aircraft carrier, turns the heads of motorists along C-470 near Morrison.

In the shadow of Front Range bluffs west of Denver, Bandimere Speedway is hosting a national contest, the professional drag racers covering a quarter mile from a dead stop to the finish line in under 4 seconds. Their top speed is more than 300 mph. A car on C-470 poking along at 65 mph takes 11 seconds longer to cover the same distance.

The roaring of engines and proximity to the Rockies has earned Bandimere Speedway the nickname “Thunder Mountain.”

Just over the bluffs to the west, a 2-mile drive away, is a source of more melodious noise: Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre, the world-renowned outdoor concert venue where the biggest musical acts play. Bandimere Speedway is the Red Rocks of racing, a world-renowned drag racing track that attracts the world’s best drivers.

Weather permitting, each Wednesday from May to October, Bandimere hosts Test and Tune night, opening up its professional track to drivers from every walk of life: fathers and sons, boyfriends and girlfriends, grandmothers, a group of guys from the local auto repair shop. They’re driving cars of all kinds – late model and high mileage, upgraded and commuter, unleaded and electric.

Running on the famed Bandimere track in an everyday car is a little like playing neighborhood football on legendary Lambeau Field in Green Bay, every play broadcast on the big screen, the stadium scoreboard keeping track of the score and time, NFL officials throwing penalty flags and moving the chains.

Bandimere, like Lambeau, is hallowed ground for its sport. Unlike Lambeau, Bandimere offers all its trappings – race stewards, a so-called Christmas tree of red, green and yellow starter lights, time and speed displays – to nonprofessionals.

Test and Tune drivers line up two by two. They inch their way together down the slope to the Bandimere quarter-mile track. Those who know the value of heating their tires ahead of the race spin them in place, with the brakes on, for better traction, adding smoke and more noise to the cacophony.

The green light signals the start, and the drivers crush their gas pedals. Some cars bellow like a machine monster in response, others seem to crawl. An LED display at the end of the track shows the racers’ times and speeds.

As the night wears on, a rhythm emerges: tire burn, roar of acceleration, deceleration at the finish, repeat, like breathing or a heartbeat. The thunder of the bigger engines becomes less jarring and more familiar, and one soon notices when Bandimere falls out of that rhythm from a delay due to leaked oil on the track.

About 10 cars back from the starting line on one Test and Tune twilight, Kyle Cramsey is whispering into girlfriend Chantelle Driego’s ear – the tire burns too loud to allow a normal conversation.

Chantelle is preparing to race her aggressively upgraded 1975 Chevy Vega, and she’s a bit nervous and softspoken. Kyle is reminding her of the basics, such as waiting to shift gears until the engine reaches a high and loud rpm. The tender conversation between the couple adds a bit of romance to the hard truths of gearboxes and physics.

Next to Chantelle’s white Chevy Vega is another white ’70s Vega, this one driven by 15-year-old Max of Castle Rock, with his dad, Ed, in the passenger seat. But on this day, the two Vegas won’t race each other. Track officials direct Max and Ed to the track alone, in the right lane. Max complies, but he and his dad both give a look at a spectator that they’re more than ready for Max to compete.

Max exudes confidence. When the light flashes green, his car accelerates. However, because he is not yet old enough for a full competitive run, he only goes an eighth of a mile with no one in the other lane. Though Max didn’t get to go nearly as fast as he wanted to, he still savors his first taste of racing.

Chantelle races next, the gravitational force of rapid acceleration pinning her back to the car seat. It’s the fastest she’s ever driven, and it’s all over in just over 12.852 seconds. Everything is a blur as she concentrates on shifting gears at the right moment, just as Kyle reminded her.

Afterward, she is excited to show a spectator the official printout she received stating that she finished the quarter mile at 104 mph, just above her goal of 100 mph. That achievement uncaged the tiger in Chantelle; she wants to do whatever it takes to run faster next time.

Youngsters make up most of the racers in line, but they’re not the only ones seeking thrills. Proving that you’re never too old for an adrenaline rush, Joy Ernster, age 73, brings her modified 1974 Dodge Charger to Bandimere for Test and Tune. When the Charger blew a gasket, she jumped into the bright red 1974 Chevy Corvette hard-top convertible she brought as a backup.

It’s the Corvette she’s testing tonight, “as many times as they’ll let me.” Joy’s first run is 90 mph, a disappointment, so she lifts the hood, leans in and adjusts her carburetor for temperature and humidity, just like she would back in her home shop. She’ll also try the opposite lane to see if it makes a difference. Sometimes it does, she says.

The Colorado State Patrol partners with Test and Tune events as part of its Responsible Speed program. “Responsible Speed” sounds like a lecture. Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Bonnie Collins prefers thinking about Test and Tune as a fun night at the track. She sometimes races her Dodge Charger patrol car at Bandimere as a form of outreach to civilian racers. She rarely wins – loaded with special equipment, her vehicle is too heavy to match the modified civilian vehicles – but winning’s not the point.

“Spectators cheer us on, whether we win or lose,” Collins said. “Hecklers will shout insults that we’re too slow.”

Whether the racers cheer or jeer her is beside the point, she said. The important thing is that they’re engaging with her.

The late John Bandimere Sr., a street racer himself in the ’50s, built the speedway. Bandimere wanted it to be a place where the best drag racers in the nation could compete, but also a place where drivers of all ages would bring their speedsters to his track and take the pressure off law enforcement agencies in stopping illegal and dangerous street racing.

Early on, John Sr. made a living with his special skill in rebuilding and racing abandoned cars and those he bought on the cheap. Word spread of his knowhow and racing ability.

That’s when car manufacturers began to take notice. General Motors invited him to Detroit in 1957. John Jr. recalls the trip, his dad racing his custom GMC Cadillac pickup against all challengers across the Midwest, an era of street racing celebrated in the 1973 film American Graffiti. “I do not remember anyone beating us on our trip,” John Jr. said.

Bandimere met with GM executive Ed Cole, the father of the V-8 Chevy and president of Chevrolet. Cole sold Bandimere for only $1 a rare and coveted 1957 Chevy Black Widow.

Back in Colorado, Bandimere talked about a “safety proving grounds,” perhaps on his brother Horace’s farm in Arvada. Locals protested that idea, so Bandimere looked farther west.

Bandimere picked land against the Front Range foothills, opening Bandimere Speedway in 1958. Bandimere leaves race teams elated or dejected – exchanging leaping high-fives over a victory that might be just a few hundredths of a second ahead of second place, heads hanging when drivers release their finish-line parachutes too late and “beach” their vehicles; a sand pit at the end of the raceway catches cars that fail to slow down before the end of the track.

Professional drag racers go breathtakingly fast. In 2021, Brittany Force set a Bandimere track record by zooming 326 mph to complete the quarter mile in 3.717 seconds.

With that kind of speed, crashes in pro races at Bandimere are not uncommon. Pro stock car racer Matt Hartford lost control from the very start of his race at Bandimere in 2013 and did all he could to avoid hitting the competitor in the right lane. He succeeded, but his car smashed the left wall. Hartford climbed out unscathed, but the crash destroyed his vehicle and bruised his ego. “I really hate to tear up equipment,” Hartford told ESPN.

Through the decades at Bandimere, Test and Tune nights have carried on largely without mayhem, seldom making it into the sports pages but never leaving the memory of its participants.

As honorable as Test and Tune’s mission may be, the speedway has never been without its critics. Neighbors in new developments on the other side of C-470 complained about the noise. Some homeowners filed suit in court, asking a judge to silence the speedway. The judge said no.

John Sr.’s grandson John “Sporty” Bandimere III spends a lot of his time, sometimes more than at the speedway itself, in building rapport within the community. If neighbors understand the benefit of the noise – safer city streets – maybe some will learn to live with it, or at least see that it helps with a growing problem. Illegal street racing made headlines last November, when a 21-year-old woman and her dog died when two street racers struck her vehicle on Sheridan Avenue in Westminster.

“Street racing in communities around us, around the Front Range, is a large problem again,” Sporty said. “For 64 years we worked on this, providing an outlet” for speed. The only other drag strips in Colorado available to street racers are in Grand Junction, Julesburg and Pueblo.

It seems proof of the success of Test and Tune Night’s mission to see so many self-described street outlaws choose a night of racing at Bandimere over the potentially deadly alternative. And unlike American Graffiti, no one is pulling apart the back end of a patrol car as a prank. They’re racing and sometimes beating a State Patrol car head-to-head to Bandimere’s finish line. That brings a smile to everyone’s face.