Bobby Johns, 1932 - 2016: An Appreciation

Bobby Johns, who passed away on Monday, March 7, at the age of 83, was a man full of surprises.

The NASCAR standout, a top-10 finisher in both of his Indianapolis 500 starts (1965 and 1969), was the answer to at least two fun “500” trivia questions – (a) Who was the driver who tried to qualify Smokey Yunick’s bizarre “sidecar” for the 1964 “500”? and (b) Who was Jim Clark’s teammate on the Lotus team at Indianapolis in 1965?

He also, without his knowledge, provided this writer with a valuable lesson with regard to making assumptions, judging people and arbitrarily placing them into categories.

Although, as a young lad, I was on hand for much of the Month of May in 1964, and had an opportunity to stand just inches from the cockpit of the extremely odd sidecar just as Bobby was about to take it out for a practice run, I did not actually meet him until two years later. In the meantime he had caused a major surprise in 1965 by being chosen to partner with Jim Clark at Lotus. I was, at that time, still a month away from being hired by Henry Banks to work at the United States Auto Club, but I was already very much a devotee of the “coming-up-through-the-ranks-and-joining-USAC” mentality. A number of European drivers, NASCAR pilots and SCCA sports car racers recently had been landing some of the more desirable “rides” and I really felt for the USAC regulars, who had been racing their hearts out and busting their rear ends year-round strictly for the opportunity to drive in the Indianapolis 500, only to be pushed to the side by people who weren’t necessarily cherishing that opportunity.

I remember thinking how unfair it was that Bobby Johns had been given the Lotus ride, my assumption being that he probably only landed it because of his strong ties with Firestone, or Ford, or both – and that, to him, it was just another race.

I found out later that I was completely wrong.

I was within a couple of weeks of completing my first year at USAC when, just a few days before the 1966 “500,” I was invited to speak at a luncheon at the Speedway Motel (now Brickyard Crossing). I was escorted to a seat at the head table where, seated right next to me, was another speaker: none other than Bobby Johns.

“You work at USAC,” he began.

Wow, how did he know THAT?

“I’m curious about something,” he continued. “You’re involved in the USAC yearbook, aren’t you? Does it show that I was in the ‘500’ last year?”

“Well, yes, of course,” I replied. “You finished seventh.”

“Yes, but I wondered whether my name shows in the results, because I ran on my FIA license and I didn’t join USAC. If that was NASCAR, they’d probably leave my name out.”

I went on to assure him that while he was not awarded any USAC points and therefore did not show in the year-end standings, he was seventh in the “500” and therefore listed appropriately in the box score.

We talked a little more, and I was quite taken aback at how gentle and polite he was.

I don’t recall talking much with him after that, even though he kept coming back through 1971 – finishing 10th in 1969 for J.C. Agajanian – and I did not fully learn of his love for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway until several years later.

One day, probably in the early 1980s, the phone rang on my desk at USAC.

“Hello there,” said the caller, “this is Bobby Johns down in Miami. Remember me?”

Wow!

“I’ve been wondering about something for quite some time,” he continued. “It used to be that if you wanted to run at Indianapolis, you had to join USAC. But then the driver interchange program started in the early 1960s and there were certain events you could run using an FIA license. That meant that USAC guys could run the Daytona 500 without joining NASCAR and sports car guys could run Daytona or Indianapolis on their FIA license. Now a lot of those guys joined USAC anyway, but I didn’t. So what I want to know is: Would I have been the first one to actually drive in the ‘500’ without being a USAC member?”  

Well, it turns out that he was; Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, Dan Gurney and a variety of others having taken out a USAC license when it had no longer been a necessity.

“Boy, I loved running at Indianapolis,” he reminisced. “In fact, when Smokey called me and asked if I wanted to take a test in the sidecar, I went straight to the airport and flew up there, determined to get to the track before anybody else could get that ride. I didn’t even have a toothbrush with me. It was a strange car, but I didn’t care.”

“Really?” I asked, somewhat surprised. “So you had always wanted to drive there?” 

“Oh, yes,” he replied with conviction, “ever since I was a boy. In fact, the first time I ever saw the Speedway there were still bricks on the main straight.

“What? Are you sure?” I responded with further surprise. “The bricks were covered over in the fall of 1961. When were you there?”

I almost fell out of the chair upon hearing his answer.

“1948.” 

“Nineteen forty-eight?” I repeated with disbelief.

“Yes,” he explained, “my dad went up to run midgets in the Midwest and I went along with him. I was 15 and out of school for the summer.”

His father was the colorful and feisty Socrates “Shorty” Johns.

“We needed tires for the midget, and Firestone had a place in the Garage Area. We drove up Georgetown Road to the crossover gate, just north of Turn 1, and I had to get out and sit in the grandstands because I was too young to go into the Garage Area. So I just waited there while my dad went over to get the tires.”

“Good grief!  Do you remember any of the tracks you went to?”

“Oh, sure. Let’s see. There was Springfield, Fairbury, Farmer’s City …” 

And he went on to list a dozen or so Midwestern quarter-mile bullrings he had gone to as a kid.

There were more surprises.

“What do you know about Bill Holland’s suspension?” he asked.

After recovering from the shock that he had even heard of Holland, I offered, “Well, he got a suspension from AAA because in November 1950 he ran in a stock car race that wasn’t sanctioned by them.”

“It wasn’t really a race,” Bobby explained. “There was a promotion at the Opa-locka Speedway in Miami (running jalopies) that whoever won this particular feature, the following week they would get to run against Indianapolis 500 winner Bill Holland in a match race. So my question is: Who was the driver he competed against that got him suspended?”

“I have no idea.”

“Me!”

“You?!”

“Yes, me. I was 17.”

He chuckled and followed up with obvious delight, “Didn’t know that, did you? How’s that for a trivia question?” 

Over the years, there were to be several more calls like that and a lot more surprises.

Right after the war, when Henry Banks was driving the Lindsey Hopkins midget, the Banks family lived in Miami, three blocks from the Johns family.

As a boy, Bobby had attended a Lindsey Hopkins vocational school.

He knew that Bobby Marshman’s father, George, used to drive midgets wearing a mask and using the name “Kilroy.” 

One of his heroes was Al Keller, a New York State midget car driver who moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, won several NASCAR short track races, switched to AAA sprints, won a few of those and ended up at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, one of his sidelines being a deputy sheriff for Greenacres, Florida.

When Bobby was taking his “rookie” test in 1964, retired three-time “500” winner Mauri Rose came over and offered some tips.

Bobby almost won the second running of the Daytona 500 in 1960, back at a time when NASCAR competition was conducted quite a bit differently from the way it is now. On the 172nd lap, Bobby took over the lead and he was still there when, with just eight laps remaining, he spun off Turn 2 and ended up in the infield grass. Of all things, the rear window had been completely sucked out, causing him to lose control.

Incredibly, there was no yellow flag!  

Instead, the race just kept on going. Bobby recovered and got back up to speed, returning to the fray with only Junior Johnson passing him. Still without a caution, he was able to salvage second place at the finish, just ahead of Richard and Lee Petty. 

Rather than be “spirited” into the Lotus ride, as I had once assumed, he actually was invited by the team, any connection with Ford and Firestone being purely incidental.

“When I drove Smokey’s sidecar in 1964,” Bobby revealed, “The Lotus garage was right next to us. We were back and forth quite a bit through the month, visiting at night, and we just hit it off. It was Andrew Ferguson (Lotus’s business manager) who called to offer me the ride. It turns out I lost a really good NASCAR ride over it because I was driving for Holman and Moody (he finished third for them in the 1965 Daytona 500) and I had to tell them, ‘Hey, I gotta go. Lotus wants me to drive at Indianapolis.’ Holman and Moody never forgave me for that and it cost me dearly in NASCAR, but, hey, I wanted to run Indianapolis.”

What was the thinking at Lotus after Clark won by leading 190 of the 200 laps, and Johns eventually was to complete 197 laps in an identical car to finish seventh?

“I think they were happy with me because I kept out of trouble and brought it home,” he reported, “And, in fact, they invited me back for the next two years, but I had to decline because I was driving for other people.”

Both claims are substantiated by Ferguson himself in the outstanding book he authored (with assistance from historian Doug Nye) on the subject of Lotus at Indianapolis.

As the 2011 Indianapolis 500 was drawing close, there was a major “reach-out” to every living driver who had ever qualified for the race in an effort to try and assemble as many as was humanly possible for a “class” photo.

Bobby didn’t think he would be able to make the trip, explaining with great sadness that his wife (a former driver!) was extremely ill and that he didn’t feel he should leave her side.

One day in very early May came the call. “Well guess what? We just lost her. She passed away. But me and a friend have been talking and gee, I dunno, he thinks we ought to come on up.”

“Under the circumstances,” I told him, “I believe it would do you a world of good. You have a lot of friends up here who would be thrilled to see you.”

So up he came and there he was in that incredible photograph taken the day before the race along with 160 of his colleagues, including 20 winners.

We hadn’t talked with him for the last couple of years, and with the historic 100th Running edging ever closer, we had been thinking about placing a call to see if he was planning to come. 

Then, on Wednesday, March 9, we received notification that two days earlier he had passed away.

R.I.P., old friend. What a pleasure it was to know you. 

Thank you for being what the Brits call “a lovely bloke.” 

What a kick it was to occasionally receive a call from you right out of the blue.

What a kick it was to call your tire business and invariably have the phone answered by you. 

Thank you for the wonderful stories and for your recollections of Jim Clark and for the tales about the colorful NASCAR fellows you ran against. 

And while we never told you this, thank you for waking us up to the fact that one never quite knows about somebody, and that snap judgments and assumptions can sometimes be wrong.