Stock Car History Online - Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson plans to go racing in 2009, and he’s got the support and encouragement of his dad, Junior. Those who’ve seen him test say the young man has the ability to do well in the sport … very, very well. (Top: Courtesy Junior Johnson; Bottom: Phil Baxter)

With Dad’s Guidance, Robert Johnson Goes Racing
By Rick Houston

Robert Johnson is rail thin and tall, very nearly a full head taller than his dad.

The young man has the build of a basketball player, but instead, he plays lacrosse at school. Now, Robert has a new sport – racing – on which to concentrate and he has a pretty good coach during the early stages of his driving career. Others have turned to his dad for advice for years. When Junior Johnson talks, people listen.

This is how far Robert’s racing career has progressed – he already has hero cards, and nice ones at that. On the back, a couple of his hobbies are listed as “driving ANYTHING” and “learning about racing.” He’s a freshman at Forsyth Country Day in North Carolina, where Richard Childress’ grandsons are also students.

So far, there are a couple of cars in the Robert Johnson stable, one that’ll run on dirt, the other on asphalt, with another machine on the way. Of course, he’s using the No. 11, the number made famous by Junior Johnson & Associates drivers like Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and Bill Elliott.

“I started thinking about (driving) a few years ago,” says the 15-year-old Robert. “I kept talking about it, and finally got something going. I learn a lot about racing just from being around (Junior), and I decided I’d see if I could do it myself.”

“He’s been talking about it … you know how kids are … since he was eight, 10, 11, 12 years old,” Junior adds. “He’s all the time acting a monkey on golf carts and stuff. You can tell he’s interested in it, and he asked me one day if I would get him a car.”

Robert has practiced two and three times a week at a number of different short tracks in North Carolina and Virginia for the past year or so, and is to the point where he runs competitive speeds. The process has been a very deliberate one, and one that hasn’t called for him to actually run an “official” race until later this year, possibly at Friendship Motor Speedway in Elkin, N.C., a dirt track just a few miles from the Johnson home in Hamptonville.

“I don’t want to throw him into a situation where he might lose his desire,” Junior says. “You can’t expect him to go over here and outrun who’s been racing for most of his life. I want him to come up through the ranks and know that he can lose if he’s not good enough, to make that desire to drive and drive and drive, until he gets to where he knows he’s competitive.

“Racing is not as easy as everybody thinks it is. They think you can get in it and run wide open. You can learn how to drive, but you’ve still gotta have a talent. You make that talent do what you have to do in the race. … I’ve never had to tell him, so far, that he’s doing anything wrong. That’s very exciting for me.”

To Robert, “just the ride is a lot of fun, just going around.” So far, driving “is what I’ve expected. The only hard part is the consistency … just doing that lap after lap.” Junior and crew chief Rock Harris, himself an incredibly successful racer in and around North Carolina, have thrown a lot at Robert.

And, so far, he’s handled everything well.

“He’s got a long learning curve yet, but process-wise, he’s way ahead of where I thought he’d be,” Junior says. “I’m not gonna leave no stone unturned, because if I do, that shortens his learning curve to the extent where he might get discouraged. I think he’s got a good future in it, if he stays with it and keeps progressing like he’s doing now.”

And then there’s that other factor …

“I think I’m gonna have a problem with him when he gets a little older … girls and stuff of that nature,” Junior says with a grin. “I hope he can handle both, where he can do a good job with racing along with growing up. He’s level headed. He’s got a good, common-sense judgment about things. He’s smart and intelligent in school, so he should adapt all that stuff to racing. I look for him to be somebody like Alan Kulwicki. I think that’s the kind of driver he’ll wind up being.

“He’s got sort of the character where he can pick up on stuff to learn that I look for a lot. Robert, he’s been around racing a little bit, but not a whole lot. All you’ve got to do is tell him something, and he picks it up right away. I look for things … has he got a natural instinct?” Junior continues. “One of the things that I like about him is that he’s not scared to go into the corner just as deep as anybody. He goes as deep as anybody I’ve ever seen, and he still has control over the car. That’s a good feature in a young driver.”

Driving deep into a turn is not, after all, a teachable talent. Drivers either have the ability, the guts or whatever … or they don’t. Robert, Junior says, has it.

“If you start a young driver out and he’s scared to go in a corner real deep, he’ll never, ever get rid of that. He’ll always be cautious of going into the corner, and that’s where everybody will pass him at.

“There ain’t nobody gonna go no deeper than he does. You cannot teach that. That’s an instinct that drivers like Earnhardt and Curtis Turner, people like that, had naturally. Anybody can get a car off of a corner. Mostly, it’s horsepower and handling coming off of a corner, but going in the corner, it’s nerve.”

Better still, Robert also seems to have a seat-of-the-pants feel for the cars he drives. No longer than he’s been driving, that’s a good thing. A very, very good thing.

“He picks up on if it’s loose or there’s something wrong with it,” Junior says. “We’ve been able to really fix his cars to where they run fast. If you don’t have that nerve and the instinct to pick up the looseness or if there’s something wrong with the car, mechanics have got a tough job. … If he stays with it, I think he’ll make a great race driver.”

Whatever happens next for Robert, school will come first.

“He knows that we want him to go to school, and he knows that’s gonna come first in his life,” Junior says. “He understands that if he don’t make it in racing, he needs his education to carry him through life. He’s very, very positive about school. He don’t leave that and choose to go test. He does his schoolwork, and he’s good at it.”

That Junior Johnson is one of the most legendary figures in NASCAR goes without saying. He won the second Daytona 500 and is credited with “discovering” the draft. He was named the greatest driver in NASCAR history by none other than Sports Illustrated several years ago. Junior took RJ Reynolds’ sponsorship to NASCAR, and he helped put Dale Earnhardt in a car owned by Richard Childress. He led Yarborough to three straight championships, and Darrell Waltrip to another three.

To a young man just getting his feet wet in the sport, such a reputation could be intensely intimidating. Not to Robert. While others see that legendary figure when they look at Junior, Robert sees Dad. “I just see Dad,”

Robert begins. “He’s not the legend to me that he is to most people. (Junior’s legacy in NASCAR) is sort of inspiring. I want to go and improve on it and carry on the name. I wouldn’t consider it intimidating.”

“He’s not competing against my career,” Junior concludes. “He definitely is his own person. He will not try to go and do better than me or copy me or outdo what I’ve done. He’s smart enough to where he knows he’s got to do his own thing, and do it his way. I’ve explained to him, ‘You don’t want to try to outdo anybody, except on the race track. If you do, you’re gonna get hurt. You do your own thing.’