HUDSON — Would Bandimere Speedway’s relocation from its “Thunder Mountain” campus in Morrison to a new location near Hudson help promote the sport of auto racing? Of course. But the Bandimere family has a higher purpose in mind.
“The main reason is not just for drag racing,” John Bandimere Jr. told BizWest. “It’s a sport, and a wonderful sport, and the Lord has blessed our business. But the speedway is a platform. We love the fact that it’s a platform for raising the Lord up, and that’s what’s really important.
“We’re not ashamed of the Gospel” of Jesus Christ, he said. “We’re one of the few tracks that started with a chaplain’s program.”
Over its 65 years in Morrison, the speedway held services in its pit areas during national-caliber events because with so many Sunday events, Bandimere said, “it’s very seldom those people have a chance to go to church services. People don’t realize that this group of people are really a tight-knit family.”
At the new location, Bandimere said, “we hope to build a very nice chapel.”
The speedway, which has affiliated with groups such as Racers for Christ, closed last week on the $3 million purchase of a 114.45-acre tract near the northwest corner of Interstate 76 and Colorado Highway 52 in unincorporated Weld County near Hudson. The seller was Rocky’s Autos Inc., a Denver dealership that closed in 2022 after 40 years, and the recorded buyer was The New Horizons Foundation, a Christian nonprofit based in Colorado Springs.
“We purchased that parcel with the foundation, where we have some money invested,” Bandimere explained. “New Horizon’s money all belongs to the Lord.”
According to its website, the nonprofit New Horizons Foundation, founded in 1989, offers “a unique and specialized structure that is dedicated to helping charitable families and those interested in initiating charitable projects take their vision to the world.”
According to Internal Revenue Service records gathered by ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, New Horizons gave $47,000 to the Bandimere Family Foundation in 2021, as well as $62,000 in 2022 and $53,000 in 2023.
The Bandimere Family Foundation, formed in 1993 by John and David Bandimere and dedicated to the memory of their father, John C. Bandimere Sr., promotes a program called “Race to Read,” which, according to its website, “strives to promote responsible citizenship and the importance of parental involvement in education.”
Bandimere said he didn’t know whether the new speedway would be set up as a nonprofit or for-profit entity, adding that “we have so many decisions to make.”
What he does know is that he’d like to nail down the purchase of the rest of Rocky’s property there, four contiguous parcels totaling 1,068 acres that are a mixture of irrigated agricultural, grazing and pastureland.
“We asked to have a little more time because that property had some issues that had to be resolved,” Bandimere said. “That property had been used for ranching. It had some areas where it has some water rights, but some of it has ended up in wetlands. It’s not a problem that can’t be resolved, but it just takes time.”
Rocky’s founder, David Rothrock, died in 2023, and his widow, Darlene, still lives on part of it. “We have a right of first refusal to buy her property,” Bandimere said.
Meanwhile, he added, “we’re in the middle of working with a neighbor to lease some property from them, and add that to the 114 acres that’ll give us what we need to get going.”
More space would allow the speedway to add more parking and such things as a go-kart track and maybe a road course, garages and industrial buildings.
But Bandimere said a major impetus is to be a better neighbor.
A speedway “brings a lot of fun to the community, but most of the community doesn’t like to have noise,” he said. “We want to tie down properties around us so we don’t have the problems we had in Morrison.”
There, he said, “you lived in an area that 65 years ago had nobody around you, but then everybody moves in around you and you’re kind of the thumb that’s sticking out.”
He compared the situation to Denver International Airport. “When it moved from Stapleton, people said, ‘Wow, it’s a long way away’ — but then everything moved in around it.”
Connecting with the community is a big part of Bandimere’s business philosophy.
“The Indy 500 and NASCAR are spectator sports. If it’s a 400- or 500-mile race, there’s a lot of hullabaloo around the start, but once the race is going, it’s kind of mundane until they get to the end,” he said.
“Drag racing, on the other side, is a participating sport. A lot of people are just little guys that come to the racetrack, bring their cars and enjoy the camaraderie. And when we do run things like the Mile High Nationals, it’s a big thing. It makes it where the little guy says, ‘Wow, we get to race at a facility where the big boys race.”
And during that enjoyment, Bandimere said, he and his family also get to spread the message of Christ.
This article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under a license agreement. © 2025 BizWest Media LLC. You can view the original here: Bandimere says Hudson speedway to promote fun, faith
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