Around 2 a.m. on a recent Sunday at a gas station in Queens, heavy-duty auto engines rev conspicuously. Clutches of twentysomething guys — and a few young women — group around customized, low-to-the ground Hondas, Mustangs and BMWs. They pass joints, talk about horsepower, and issue challenges to race.

Most every weekend, racers meet up — as The Post has previously reported, the areas with the most 311 complaints are Richmond Hill’s 124th Street, Frances Lewis Boulevard in northern Queens and Leo Fracassi Way in The Bronx — to race illegally, at speeds of up to 160 mph.

“This is the thing I’m passionate about,” said one racer, alongside his Acura Integra, its hood removed to reveal a spotless engine. “I’m not letting anyone get in the way of my passion.”

At the gas station — colloquially known as “E-85” for the racing fuel it sells — word spreads that two contenders are ready to go. Suddenly, cars skitter onto the street, spewing exhaust as they head for Nassau Expressway. Leading the way is Jimmy, a 22-year-old from Jamaica, Queens, behind the wheel of a 225-horsepower 1994 Honda Civic with the gas tank re-situated in the trunk to enhance fuel flow.

Out on the highway, all cars brake to a stop, blocking traffic.

At the front of the pack, Jimmy spins his front tires (a procedure known as a “burn out”) to improve traction. His opponent, also in a Honda, does the same. Standing between the two cars, a man forcefully drops his arm in a simulation of a starting flag.

The opponents scorch down a quarter-mile of blacktop, getting up to 120 mph and leaving behind smells of burnt rubber and spent E-85. The race lasts less than 30 seconds, then the expressway traffic is allowed to resume its normal flow.

Back at E-85, Jimmy accepts a fist bump in celebration of his win. Although he sometimes races for money — as much as $600 per run — this one “was for competition,” he said.

A regular participant told The Post that racing has led to crashes on the Belt and Southern State parkways.

In January, at a hot street-racing spot along Review Avenue in Long Island City, a racer nicknamed Mello smashed into a street pole at high speed. Paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene. Spookily, the spot, in the shadow of the Kosciuszko Bridge, is known as “Cemetery” for the Calvary graveyard that lies alongside it.

“Racing has gone on there for at least 30 years,” said NYPD Capt. Michael Gibbs, of the 108th Precinct, which counts the avenue in its turf. He actually grew up in the neighborhood. “Maybe, when I was a kid, I allegedly went there and watched [racing],” he admitted. “I never thought I would be on the enforcement end.”

But not long after he became captain of the 108th in January, Gibbs prioritized putting a stop to the racing. His most recent action was to order the ­deployment of speed bumps along ­Review Avenue.

Hearing about the speed bumps, one racer at E-85 shrugged it off and mysteriously said, “We have ways to work around [that].”

Jimmy was there when Mello ran his last race. “I knew the kid,” he said. “I cried the whole night . . . You see somebody [dying] while doing something you love, it’s scary.”

But, he added, “It didn’t make me think twice about continuing.”

Like a lot of the E-85 crew, Jimmy works from home as a mechanic and raced professionally before he was old enough to have a driver’s license. Inspired by “the Spanish kids in my neighborhood who raced,” he found a 1994 Honda on Craigslist and negotiated a swap: His cellphone, Beats headphone, iPad and laptop for the purple car with 187,000 miles on it.

Unaware of how to use a stick shift, Jimmy told The Post, “I figured it out on the way home.” He quickly set about swapping out the engine for a newer, faster one. “That first car was my automotive trade school,” he recalled.

Now, five cars later, Jimmy described his current motor as “a Frankenstein. The top is from an Integra. The bottom is a Honda SUV. For me the joy is in driving a thing that I built.”

Since then, Jimmy said, he has participated in some 60 races — a few for money, most for glory.

“Behind the wheel, I’m so focused,” he said. “It’s just me and the car and the road. No radio or any distractions.

He has no shortage of competitors. Among them is a New Jersey woman, Kitty, who ranks among the scene’s very few females.

“People freak out about a girl,” said the 29-year-old. “Then they see me racing and lose their s–t.”

Kitty, who works in the beauty-products industry, grew up in The Bronx and started going to local street races right after she finished high school. “I just liked the idea of speed,” Kitty said. ”People ask how fast [my car] goes and I say it’s slow. Then I blow them away. I love being underestimated.”

Street racing is not a cheap sport. Kitty has put $11,000 into her Integra. Jimmy’s five Hondas have eaten up $20,000. Not that you’d know it by looking at them: The cars often appear to be junkers.

‘You race for $500 but your tires alone [cost] $500.’ - Former street racer Ghost Boy Aki on the financial hardships

“How the car looks is not important,” explained Jimmy. “Looks are nothing if your car is slow.”

Yonkers-raised racer Ghost Boy Aki used to street-race “for as much as $14,000,” he bragged — until he went into debt for some $25,000, got laid off from his job and had to give up his Honda.

In 2017, he bought back the shell of his old car and decided to take up professional, legal drag racing.

Now, he has 55,000 Instagram followers and sponsors who pay as much as $15,000 to slap their stickers on his Honda.

“I retired from street racing and race only on regulation tracks around the country,” he said, adding that street racing is economically unviable in the long run. “You race for $500 but your tires alone are $500 and have to be replaced every seven or eight races.”

Sometimes, when more than 100 spectators show — but the police don’t — and races go off without a hitch, it can seem like a block party. “You race until the sun comes up,” Jimmy said.

But on one Saturday night in September, the E-85 racers look for a spot with no luck. Along the road near a shopping mall, cops lay in wait. Review was a non-starter. Speed-bumps were not yet up, but officers from the 108th were.

The drivers finally find a street just off of a Brooklyn Queens Expressway exit ramp, not far from Review but in another precinct.

But about an hour, red and blue lights start flashing, and racers squeal away in every direction.

Ironically, this feels like the most dangerous moment in any street race — when the spectators and racers are desperate to escape.

“I’d love to get the racers all together and tell them to stop doing it,” said Capt. Gibbs. “It’s dangerous to pedestrians, to other drivers and to themselves.”

But even with the potential of having his vehicle confiscated for what Gibbs calls “reckless behavior” — not to mention of injury or death — Jimmy won’t stop.

“Racing saved my life; it kept me away from the wrong people and helped me to find my place in the world,” he said. “Behind the wheel, I feel free. I’m above everything — including the law — and nobody can catch me.”