If you’re old enough you’ll recall the days of drag strips like FremontRaceway in California, Oswego Drag Raceway outside of Chicago, MotorCity Dragway near Detroit or even places like Flemington Dragway in NewJersey – or better still, the sixteenth-of-a-mile drags that took placeon a quarter mile oval track near Englishtown.
By today’sstandards most of those places were pretty grim, but let’s face it, inour little world of drag racing they were at least acceptable, or ifnot, at least most of our friends managed to escape with their livesafter competing at these venues. Yeah, they were really something.Technical inspections often consisted of nothing more strenuous thanbeing able to prove you were breathing before you climbed behind thewheel – although if you stopped for a bite at the concession stand youmight not be by the time the second round rolled around. Scheduling?That was for sissies. At these tracks, and far too many more likethem, your class call could come anywhere from noon until, well, maybemidnight – but that was only at the tracks that didn’t have curfews.
Ourparents had a marvelous impression of the activity we loved above allothers (well, almost above all others!), and heaven forbid they everdecided to just go along with Junior to see what this car racing thingwas all about. One look at the clientele these venues attracted andyou might find yourself grounded until you turned 21 and got drafted!
One Of Drag Racing’s Most Innovative Promoters Speaks His Mind
Lorraine and John Bandimere, Jr. are the force behind the success of Bandimere Speedway – along with many other members of this dedicated family.
If you’re old enough you’ll recall the days of drag strips like Fremont Raceway in California, Oswego Drag Raceway outside of Chicago, Motor City Dragway near Detroit or even places like Flemington Dragway in New Jersey – or better still, the sixteenth-of-a-mile drags that took place on a quarter mile oval track near Englishtown.
You don’t have packed grandstands like this just because of the show. The fans are there for that, of course, but they’re also there because they know they’ll be treated like the valued customers they are at Bandimere Speedway.
By today’s standards most of those places were pretty grim, but let’s face it, in our little world of drag racing they were at least acceptable, or if not, at least most of our friends managed to escape with their lives after competing at these venues. Yeah, they were really something. Technical inspections often consisted of nothing more strenuous than being able to prove you were breathing before you climbed behind the wheel – although if you stopped for a bite at the concession stand you might not be by the time the second round rolled around. Scheduling? That was for sissies. At these tracks, and far too many more like them, your class call could come anywhere from noon until, well, maybe midnight – but that was only at the tracks that didn’t have curfews.
Our parents had a marvelous impression of the activity we loved above all others (well, almost above all others!), and heaven forbid they ever decided to just go along with Junior to see what this car racing thing was all about. One look at the clientele these venues attracted and you might find yourself grounded until you turned 21 and got drafted!
Okay, maybe we’re painting a pretty grim picture here, and no doubt we’ll get letters defending the tracks we’ve mentioned, so let’s put in a little qualifier right now: We mean no disrespect by having named these tracks as sample facilities of their era. We’ve been to every track mentioned, and as much fun as we had at those places, let’s be realistic, when you get right down to it they weren’t really as nice as our fading memories might like them to have been.
I think that what happens with drag strips is that most of the guysrunning the tracks are employees. It’s just a job to them, and they’rereal concerned about covering their butts. They don’t want to make amistake. They don’t want to step out of the box. - JOHN BANDIMERE, JR.
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A full time office staff stays busy on any race day, answering questions and assisting fans with problems.
Oh, how lucky we are today – at least as far as the venues at which the NHRA POWERade Series appears (with a couple of notable exceptions). In the mid-70s, when drag racing began to turn the corner towards becoming a major league activity (thanks in no small measure to arrival of Winston as the series sponsor), the venues at which the races took place also took a turn for the better. In place of the tracks we mentioned there were the then stunning facilities like Orange County International Raceway, Dallas International Motor Speedway and Ontario Motor Speedway. Alas, all three have long since been turned into corporate business parks or vineyards, but in their place have come even better tracks, tracks that every race fan can look at with pride. Names like Thunder Valley Dragway in Bristol, The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway come to mind, as do venerable and improving-all-the-time tracks like Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, Gainesville Raceway in Florida and Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown.
Far from brand new, but also being constantly updated, upgraded and improved is Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colorado, just outside Denver. The home of the Mile-High Nationals since its inception, a $4 million renovation in 1988 put the track on the NHRA map, where they’re destined to stay until, well, the Bandimere family decides that they’ve had enough of motorsports. The odds on that happening are about the same as the odds on Lindsay Lohan staying out of rehab.
“Bandimere family” is a key phrase when discussing any aspect of this track, because the entire clan is involved. Nepotism can be a very negative term, but in the case of Bandimere Speedway, any member of the family who’s gotten a job there has not only earned it, they do it well. Family member or not, our impression of John Bandimere, Jr. is such that if you don’t do the job, he’ll graciously help you find employment elsewhere.
Uniformed clean-up workers abound at Bandimere. That’s why the facility appears spotless even on the busiest of race days.
When John Bandimere, Sr. built the track it was the result of the family having been in the auto parts business for years. As his son recalls, he was the first person to shove a supercharged Cadillac engine into a Ford-bodied car, calling it a “Fordillac.” John, Sr’s aim was to demonstrate high performance at high altitude – and while there was a shortage of the former, there was plenty of a latter around – all around!
There were two other tracks in operation when Bandimere Speedway was built, although both are no longer open. The reasoning behind the project wasn’t about potential income. Rather, it was a simple matter of wanting a place to race, and having to build on so they could race. John, Sr. moved all the dirt for the facility himself, and actually built the racing surface as well. It was definitely a case of if he built it, they would come, and that’s exactly what happened. Every high performance junkie in the Denver area suddenly found himself with a place at which to demonstrate his skills. Ironically enough, many of those budding competitors really knew very little about high performance, so John, Sr. turned to his auto parts business experience, and taught them that adding headers without upping compression ratios and the like was a fruitless exercise. In a sense, he not only provided Coloradans with a place to race, he taught many of them how to do it.
In the early days the track operated on the honor system. You dropped a dollar in a box near the starting line, and that bought you a pass down the quarter mile.
The track soon took up so much of John Sr’s. time that John, Jr. had to take over the parts business. He fed money from the business into the race track to keep it going, but ultimately reached the point where he couldn’t pay his own personal bills. At that point the family decided to go full bore with the race track, and as John, Jr., remembers it, that was in the mid- to late-60s.
What’s a dollar worth? In the early days building Bandimere Speedway ate up about 150,000 of them. Clearly, there’s been massive investment since then, and if you want to build a super track in the 21st century, better plan on a minimum investment of $10 million.
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Tami Shrader, Bandimere’s daughter, efficiently and effectively handles the track’s public relations program, which should be the model for other facilities.
As Bandimere admits, “I may be a little light on that estimate because of all the modern amenities you have to have. Things like VIP towers and special seating.
You know, I don’t think we’ve yet seen what a tower should really look like.
“Billy Meyer was kind of the first (to build a big tower at the Texas Motorplex), and everyone’s kind of copied that, but we’re now seeing these facilities like in Las Vegas and Indy, and they’ve also done it out in Pomona with things like the skyboxes. That’s not the way it might be in the future. Almost all of those facilities don’t have the ‘services’ infrastructure you need. There’s no place to cook, and food is a real part of our business, so consequently you have these caterers coming in after preparing the food somewhere else. They have to bring it out to the track and serve it. We ought to be preparing and cooking the food right here in the tower.
“If all of a sudden you have a customer who says, We need food for another 50 people, it should be no problem, but now it can be one. We should be able to say, What would you like, steak? because when you’re dealing with corporate America, corporate America has money, and they want to take care of their people in a first class manner.”
Bandimere is, like the Baders at Summit Motorsports Park in Ohio and the Bruton Smith tracks in Las Vegas, Bristol and Sonoma, extremely conscious of being in a customer-oriented business. That’s just one reason why there’s been consideration given to building a new track somewhere nearby. As he says, “We’ve thought about that because of things like, we don’t have running water for our patrons, so we don’t have ‘real’ bathrooms. (This) was a perfect facility until we went to 18-wheelers and huge racer hospitality areas. Some of these teams have as many as seven trailers for three race cars. Our real estate has been eaten up by the expanding hardware of the racers and sponsors, but that’s not a bad thing, it’s just the reality of the situation.”
The placement of Bandimere Speedway’s Top Eliminator Club is unique to the sport, providing arguably the best view of the racing action from any such facility.
COMPPLUS: Is there any way you could physically expand the facility?
BANDIMERE:
Yes, there is, and we’re working on that. We do have some ideas as to how we can expand.COMPPLUS; There’s been some talk of a 30-acre plot across the road that would enable you to expand the current pit area into what’s now being used as Gold Key parking. Is that true?
BANDIMERE:
Yes, but it doesn’t make financial sense to do it. The people that own that land want $6.5 million for it, and why would you spend that kind of money just for parking that you’re only going to use one time a year? You’d be much better off to find another location and build a new facility from the ground up.Bandimere’s placement of their High & Mighty Hall of Fame monument at the base of the stairs leading up to the pits results in maximum exposure for some of the sport’s legendary names.
BANDIMERE:
Those plans went away. The City of Aurora, which is where it would have been, was not able to supply us with what we needed in terms of utilities, tax breaks and things like that that are needed today to build these multi-million dollar facilities. This all came about at the time when there were rumors that NASCAR was coming to Colorado because of the very nice facility in Colorado Springs called Pikes Peak International. But, that track was built in the wrong location, and that facility wanted a Cup race and didn’t get one, but regardless of that, their attorneys were concerned about another multi-purpose race plant being built closer to Denver, so they managed to get a referendum through that essentially stopped the Aurora project.The other location is between our present location and Boulder on Highway 93 that could have been very similar to our current track, but it had a serious wind and weather problem that precluded our pursuing it further.
COMPPLUS: As the residential communities come closer to the track are you facing the prospect of pressure about noise and the like?
BANDIMERE:
I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, but we’re going to do everything we can to educate the people who would be coming our way about the track and what we do here. We are very heavily involved in local community activities around here. We started inviting local people out here about 12 years ago because we wanted our neighbors to know what we were doing. We didn’t start it because we thought our neighbors would love us, but on the other side of the coin it’s sometimes happened.When we announced that we might be moving to the east side of the city, and that deal fell through, we received a lot of letters from our neighbors saying they were glad we were saying.
They’re going to build 1,400 homes here in the valley, and the dirt for that’s being moved now. (You can see the development from anywhere on the track grounds. – Ed.) In fact, it’ll be in the 2008 Parade of Homes, and the Alameda exit will become a full on and off-ramp. It will actually make exiting the track easier for our fans because when you go out and have to turn left, you’ll go right up the road and on to the highway (Colorado 470). That will be really helpful to our facility.
They had a meeting with potential home owners over there in July, and they sat down and watched the fireworks from the track, and all of them were in favor of our facility. We ran some jets and some fuel cars, stuff that makes some noise, and they loved it.
We’ve not had one complaint from the new village that’s right off Morrison Road, either, not one.
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COMPPLUS: How do you approach things in a different manner from some of the other tracks o the POWERade circuit. What separates your facility from those others?
BANDIMERE:
I really believe part of the problem we have today in management is that management feels that everyone should be part of the team, that everyone’s a part of everything. That way they know that someone’s going to back them up if something goes wrong. I’m an owner. I own all of the corporation, so my wife and I make all of the decisions. But, my family’s involved with me, and I’ve been giving them stock and working with them on various projects. I love what I do, but I’ve turned a lot of things over to other family members.I think that what happens with drag strips is that most of the guys running the tracks are employees. It’s just a job to them, and they’re real concerned about covering their butts. They don’t want to make a mistake. They don’t want to step out of the box. I have a little gizmo on my desk that’s all about being outside the box, and I want our people thinking outside that box, because there are sometimes new ways of doing things.
What makes our operation different from the majority is that I came to the conclusion that when Dallas Gardner was president of NHRA and was giving a speech one day, he said, ‘Gentlemen, your drag strips are your gold mines.’ I left that meeting and I got to thinking about things like the Mile-High Nationals, and I thought we were leaving a lot of money on the table. I thought about the fact that in four days we were taking in 80 percent of our annual revenues. What happens if it rains out and we lose the whole cotton-pickin’ thing? How are we going to stay alive?
Most tracks operate like this: They work through the summer earning cash, and then they eat that cash up during the winter, and when they’ve run out of money they have a line of credit at a local bank until they start earning money again. Well, that’s a really devastating way to live. So, I said to my family and staff that I wasn’t going to be satisfied until the Mile-High Nationals is 20 percent or less of our annual income. The reason I said that is because if we lost the Mile-Highs totally we would still be fine. We might not make the kind of money we’d like to make, but we’re going to survive.
I’ll tell you right now that the Mile-High Nationals is 20 to 25 percent of our annual income from the track. We run every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday now. We’ll average between 200 and 220 cars on a Wednesday night, which is just a Test ‘n Tune. On Friday we run an average of just under 300, and Saturday night it’s just under 400. We split them between types of cars on Friday and Saturday. Sundays are Special Event days. It might be a swap meet, an all-Ford day, an all-Mopar day, something like that. We even run all truck events, and we’ve developed all of those without going to the outside. We do all of those events in-house.
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Bandimere listens as tuner Jimmy Prock expresses an opinion about, well, who knows what? But we name other tracks where management never appears to have the time to listen to their customers. Not so at Bandimere Speedway.
BANDIMERE:
We had several of them, but I’ll tell you my philosophy on these kinds of things. I think what our industry does is take an idea and kill it by running it too often. There used to be a lot of high dollar bracket races, but there are so many of them at so many tracks that most of them don’t work any more. It’s the same with the Sport Compacts. What makes our Mile-High Nationals work is that it’s once a year. We don’t show our fans fuel cars, other than the occasional one or two here and there, more than once a year. That makes our fans eager to see them.When Topeka and the Motorplex had two races a year they finally figured out they can make more money with one race than they can with two. It’s expensive to put these races on.
COMPPLUS: Do you think this facility could handle two national events?
BANDIMERE:
Absolutely we could handle two, but I don’t want to. I don’t have any interest in doing that. Our national event is perfect. We’ve been busy from April until the race happens, and afterwards, we won’t miss a beat. We’ll have a Wednesday night Test ‘N Tune the minute the race is over, and the following weekend we’ll have a big truck race, and then we’ll go right into a Jr. Dragster race.COMPPLUS: How important is customer service to you?
BANDIMERE:
It’s the most important part of your business. I spend a lot of time down in the sportsman pits talking to the racers and their families during the national event because those are our customers. The pros are our show, and I love those guys. I know ‘em, I’ve played golf with some of ‘em, but it’s the people pitted down at the other end of the track who are our regulars, who are going to be back before next year’s national event. We run a lot of races and I want those people to know we care about them.COMPPLUS: Do you think there are track operators out there, both on and not on the national event schedule, that don’t pay enough attention to those things?
BANDIMERE:
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COMPPLUS: Why do you think they don’t seem to recognize those problems?
BANDIMERE:
Number one, I don’t think they’ve been educated properly, and I don’t know whose fault that is. Most track operators are really frustrated racers, and they decide ‘I can do that better.’ The thing about it is that for whatever reason, they can not get rid of the driver’s helmet. They’re still a racer at heart, so they think and act like racers. That is not how you run a business. You run a business on the numbers. Maybe you run a street car event that a ‘racer’ isn’t going to like, but if that what works for your track, you do it. Some of those guys don’t see that.You asked about the imports. When NHRA came to us we were running about 550 imports at our local events. The minute we did the Sport Compact national event it immediately went to 200 cars. Why? Where did the other 350 cars go?
It wasn’t NHRA’s fault, it was due to the fact that the import racers don’t like structure. You have to understand who your customer is, and once you understand that you work to that. You have to make it fun. We work hard to make it fun for everyone.
The other thing is that some tracks do not project a family atmosphere, a fun atmosphere. So the racers don’t project a nice attitude. If we have a racer who feels that way the best place for him to be is not here.
We’re not mean. We just say, if you can’t have some fun and have a good attitude, then you’re in the wrong sport. This is a family-friendly deal. If we announce on the PA that someone needs a rocker arm for a big block Chevy we’ll have 10 guys come up to the tower. They want to help their friends, and that’s how it should be.
I didn’t think this way at first, but my son convinced me, and now I’d bet we’re one of the toughest tracks around on inspections. If you don’t pass, you don’t race. It used to be that we’d let things slide a little just to take in the thirty bucks, but you can’t afford to do that. If that guy gets hurt you’re in a real mess, so we’re really tough on that stuff.
A hard-working PR person knows both the media, and the racers she’s trying to promote –and, like Steve Johnson, they’re appreciative of her efforts.
COMPPLUS: Are your community efforts on-going at all times?
BANDIMERE:
Yes. My daughter, Tammy, is involved in the Jefferson County Library Commission, and I’ve been involved in the Chamber of Commerce and things like the Light Rail group. We work very hard to be community active and community positive.You know, it’s kind of funny, but I never saw anyone from Mopar except the ‘worker bees’ until we started having a golf tournament, and now all of the executives are coming out here, and they love the area. To us, helping to promote the community is just as important as promoting the race.
It’s like the Mopar Block Party in Golden. It’s had its ups and downs, but it’s a great way to kick off the race weekend, and it gets a lot of people involved who just might come out to the race, too. This is our 19th year with Mopar as our event sponsor, and next year will be the 20th – but it’ll also be our 50th year in business.
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COMPPLUS: Why is it that when individual track operators are named as doing an excellent job the names one constantly hears are yours and the Baders?
BANDIMERE: I know the Baders well, and I think a lot of them. If Bill, Jr. sits down with you and says something, you can cont on it being so. They’re genuine people, and they really believe in customer service, which is what this is all about. The (Bill) New family out of Idaho are like that. They may not run a national event, but if you talk to racers from up there you’ll hear the same sort of things. They understand that this is about making your customers – and your racers – happy.
I give the credit at Bandimere Speedway to God. I’m not going to get religious, but I never understood why I got into this business. I wanted to be a cattle buyer. I went to Colorado State University and studied those things. I wanted to have a ranch, maybe, or something like that, but that wasn’t God’s plan for my life. But what’s been unique about my life is I don’t play to make anyone happy but the Lord. I want Him to be happy with me. When you don’t try to make the world think you’re something you’re not, because most of us have a tendency to do that, you live a happier life. I don’t want to be accepted by anyone. I want to be accepted by the Lord. Once I realized that doing what the Lord wanted, it’s amazing what happens within our business. Sometimes we don’t tell one another what we really feel, and we should do that more often.
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