The videographer behind the Wheels Plus channel on YouTube is a big fan of The (four-lane) Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but this time around, the action is from Bandimere Speedway, aka Thunder Mountain in the NHRA.
Fans of the Mile-High Nationals already know the dragstrip facility was closed down by the Bandimere family at the end of the 2023 racing season as they want to relocate and grow their facilities. That's one of the main reasons we have seen it on very rare occasions over the past months – but this videographer probably found some lost footage from last year that's worth sharing.
By the way, Bandimere Speedway, located just outside Morrison and Lakewood, Colorado, opened in 1958 and has several tricks up its sleeve that make it unique among NHRA events – it's located at over 5,000 feet above sea level. Hence, the air is much thinner compared to other tracks. That means the downforce on cars is negatively impacted; naturally aspirated cars are starved for oxygen, and the thinner air also slows down the cars at higher speeds.
Considering all that, it is no wonder that turbo and supercharged vehicles will fare much better than their N/A counterparts, right? Well, let's see. In this video feature embedded below, there are two sets of great Mopar and Blue Oval foes. First, we have the eternal Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat duking it out with an older S-197 II Ford Mustang Shelby GT500. Secondly, according to the description, a Challenger Scat Pack met up for a brawl with a Ford Mustang GT.
The first pair of modern muscle cars lived up to their names – both on and off the track. The Shelby looks positively menacing, dressed in black with crimson stripes, while the Dodge is a little more serene in its blue attire, and only the hood is black as night. Well, looks can be deceiving, as it turns out – while the Shelby driver had a great reaction time, its skills with the Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual transmission failed him or her and allowed the auto-equipped Hellcat to take full control of the race.
The end result is only natural – a great 10.08s pass at 137 mph for the Mopar and just 11.94s at 122 mph for the Blue Oval foe. No worries, there was a chance to even the odds back. Next up came a black Ford Mustang GT and a black Dodge Challenger Scat Pack, and this time around, the Ford driver didn't waste the opportunity to score another win against Team Mopar with an 11.51s pass against its opponent's 13.13s ET. So, which one did you like more, the supercharged or naturally-aspirated folks, as someone ended up 'crushed' in both categories?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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