Dick Johnson Racing
Dick Johnson Racing is Australia's oldest motor racing team competing in the Supercars Championship. Founded by Dick Johnson, the team's drivers have won ten Australian Touring Car Championship titles and the team has taken four victories in Australia's premier race, the Bathurst 1000.
The team has raced as the Shell V-Power Racing Team since 2017, when Viva Energy Australia — the exclusive licensee for the supply of Shell fuels in Australia — became the team's Naming Rights Partner.
Located in Stapylton on the Gold Coast, the team currently runs two Ford Mustang GTs for Brodie Kostecki in the No. 17 car and Rylan Gray in the No. 38 car.
History
After being only a sporadic entrant during the early 70’s, Johnson first reached prominence after his crash caused by a rock on track at Bathurst in 1980. Over $70,000 was donated by the public and Ford Australia to return him for the following season.Early years and Group C
The longest-established motor racing team in Australia, Dick Johnson Racing was founded in 1980. The team was originally based out of Johnson's home in Daisy Hill in Brisbane's southern suburbs, before moving to facilities within sponsor Palmer Tube Mills' factory.During the 1970s, Johnson was only a sporadic competitor in the Australian Touring Car Championship, but a regular competitor, and victor in the Queensland Touring Car Championship driving a Holden LJ Torana GTR XU-1 backed by petroleum giant Shell, and later by prominent Brisbane Holden dealership, Zupps. Johnson's national profile increased with the formation of Bryan Byrt Racing with Johnson as lead driver late in 1976, giving Johnson his first drives in a Ford XB Falcon GT Hardtop. The team folded at the end of the 1979 season, but Johnson was able to use some of its resources to establish his own team for the following season with financial hold from Johnson's long time friend Ross Palmer and his Brisbane-based business Palmer Tube Mills.
After briefly investigating running a Mazda RX-7, Johnson came to the fore when a change in regulations introduced the Ford XD Falcon to the series. Johnson debuted his new Falcon at a non-championship meeting at Lakeside in June, and then finished second in the car in the 1980 CRC 300 at Amaroo Park in August. Johnson served notice of his and the XD's arrival to a delighted Peter Brock when he led the Holden Dealer Team VB Commodore early in the race and it was only tyre troubles that dropped him to second behind the Commodore. Brock was delighted as other than Kevin Bartlett's 5.7L Chevrolet Camaro Z28, his HDT Commodore had proven near unbeatable in 1980 and Johnson and the new model Ford Falcon provided a welcome new challenger.
The largely unheralded Johnson then surprised everyone when he qualified on the front row for the 1980 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 alongside Bartlett's Camaro and in front of Brock. Bartlett had been the fastest in official qualifying, but Dick matched his time by the of a second. When the flag dropped to start the race, the Camaro bogged down and Johnson took off, quickly building a large lead over the first sixteen laps of the race, including putting a lap on four time and reigning Bathurst champion Brock after the Dealer Team Commodore had to pit for minor repairs. On the seventeenth lap after just having lapped Brock, Johnson collided with the wall coming out of The Cutting after running over a large rock in the road. Coming out of The Cutting, Johnson found a tilt-tray tow truck that was retrieving a mechanically failed car from the circuit on one side of the road and a basketball sized rock sitting right on the only path past the truck. The Falcon ran over the rock with its left wheels and caused Johnson to impact the wall which was enough to all but destroy the car. In the aftermath of the crash, as Johnson was standing beside the car as it lay across the track, he was almost cleaned up by the 3rd placed Falcon of Bob Morris who was forced to lock his brakes in a successful bid to avoid hitting Johnson after apparently not paying attention to the yellow flags.
The tale of Johnson's battle with the rock at Bathurst in 1980 is still remembered, and some AU$72,000 was donated by the Australian public who pledged money through the race broadcasters, the Seven Network after watching the crash and a subsequent TV interview with Johnson conducted by visiting American commentator Chris Economaki. The amount pledged by Channel 7 viewers was matched by dollar for dollar by then Ford Australia boss Edsel Ford II who recognised the significance of Johnson's performance at Bathurst in keeping Ford at the sharp end of touring car racing. The overall donation of $144,000 plus the sale of the crashed Falcon to fellow Queenslander John Donnelly who repaired and returned it to racing, was enough to get Johnson back on track with a new XD Falcon for 1981.
Inspired by the support and feeling a great sense of debt to the Australian public, Johnson went on to win the 1981 Australian Touring Car Championship in a thrilling duel with Peter Brock which went down to the last race of the series at his home track of Lakeside in Brisbane. There Johnson led from the front and just managed to win by a second from Brock in what many believe to be one of the best touring car races seen in Australia with both drivers praising each other for a clean race in which Brock had many chances to actually punt the Tru-Blu Falcon off the road but resisted the temptation to do so. After leading early in the Hang Ten 400 at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne, a couple of spins thanks to a new suspension set up that was not working handed Brock his seventh Sandown endurance race win in a row. The suspension problems were fixed by the time the team got to Bathurst for the James Hardie 1000 and Johnson again put the Falcon on the front row alongside Bartlett's Camaro. There, alongside veteran co-driver John French they becoming the first Queenslander's to win the event. With Allan Moffat becoming a factory Mazda driver, Johnson became Ford's lead driver and 'folk hero'. The 1981 race is remembered not only as DJR's first win at The Mountain, but also because the race was red flagged on lap 121 of 163 because of a crash at McPhillamy Park on lap 122 which blocked the track. As the Johnson/French car was leading at the end of lap 121 and the race had travelled more than two-thirds distance, the race was declared with Johnson and French the winners. It was the first time in the races history that the race had been declared short of the required distance.
Johnson won the touring car championship again in 1982 in the Tru Blu XD Falcon, though he had actually finished second in points behind Peter Brock. However, Brock was disqualified for the use of yet to be homologated engine parts and the subsequent loss of points gave Johnson his second ATCC championship win. At Bathurst, DJR had the new model Ford XE Falcon, but they had been overtaken in speed by the lighter Holden Commodore SS'. Despite running strong all day and having no major troubles other than a broken front sway bar late in the race which slowed the car by approximately one second per lap, the No. 17 Falcon finished in 4th place on the road, but was disqualified after post race scrutineering for illegal engine modifications. In his biography, Johnson maintains that they were legal, over the counter Ford parts but that the team did not have the money to fight the ruling. The 1982 race was the first time that Johnson's car carried Channel 7's Racecam unit which brought television viewers footage from inside the car. It was the start of Johnson's long run with Racecam and made him more popular with the Australian public, even with Holden fans, thanks to his quick wit and seemingly endless number of one-liners while driving in races.
The 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship was a disappointment as the heavy, approximately, XE Falcon was not competitive against the around lighter Commodores, the Nissan Bluebird Turbo, or Allan Moffat's Mazda RX-7 which won the title. To help fix the problems with the Falcon, Johnson enlisted the services of former Williams Formula One mechanic Wayne Eckersley, who was now based in Brisbane. Eckersley's work with the cars suspension, plus new parts in the August homologation saw the Falcon back as a competitive car, as displayed by Johnson when he easily led the Valvoline 250 at Sydney's Oran Park Raceway before a slow pit stop dropped his car, now painted Green to promote major sponsor Palmer Tube Mills' latest product "Greens-Tuf", back to second behind the Bluebird of George Fury. The Falcon was also on the pace at the 1983 Castrol 400 at Sandown where the long front and back straights suited the over of the 351 V8 engine. Dick qualified the car in 2nd place behind Brock's HDT Commodore and won the jump at the start. However, his charge would only last only a few hundred metres and before the first turn the Falcon's clutch shredded itself, ending his race. Johnson attributed the failure to the condition of the pit paddock which had been turned to mud following a couple of days of heavy rain, with Dick claiming it was mud in the clutch that had caused the problem.
Then came the 1983 James Hardie 1000 where Johnson's Falcon was one of the favourites to claim pole position. Johnson also had a new co-driver in 1983 with 1974 race winner Kevin Bartlett replacing John French who was driving for the factory backed Nissan team. During qualifying it was again the Commodore of Peter Brock which had set the pace, with Johnson a close second and predicting that the Falcon could go even faster. During the Hardies Heroes Top 10 runoff on the Saturday morning, Johnson had his second major accident at Bathurst. On his lap for pole, Johnson ran slightly wide at Forrest's Elbow, with the rear of the Falcon clipping the wall on the exit of the corner. The car then hit tyres which were protruding from the edge of the wall which tore the right front wheel to the right and broke the cars steering. The Greens-Tuf Falcon was destroyed as it ran through a grove of trees. While the car was a write-off, Johnson thankfully emerged from the wreck with little more than a headache and a small cut over his left eye, though he has no memory of the crash, or the lift back to the pits with Peter Brock who was on his warm up lap for his second run.
In a very generous move, fellow Falcon runner and reporter for The Mike Walsh Show, Andrew Harris, approached Johnson's wife Jill in the pits shortly after the crash and offered his car to the Johnson team if a replacement car could not be found for him. Johnson's sponsor and friend Ross Palmer leased the Harris Falcon, while also buying the Barry Lawrence / Geoff Russell Holden Commodore for Harris to drive.
The Harris Falcon, which was actually the then Alan Jones owned, Bob Morris XE Falcon that had crashed in practice at Bathurst in 1982 and could not be repaired in time to take the start, was converted by Dick's and the TAFE smash repair team overnight in a marathon rebuild which included help from other leading teams, while the Commodore was re-painted in the colours of Harris' sponsors which also included a Bendigo Ford dealer. Unfortunately for Johnson and new co-driver Bartlett, the hastily rebuilt car was to only last 61 laps before being withdrawn with terminal electrical trouble. Better luck fell on Harris and co-driver Gary Cooke, who would finish tenth outright in the car dubbed as a "Falcodore" by its new team, with Harris winning the "Wynns Rookie of the Year" award. Despite their troubles, the Johnson Falcon was the fastest recorded car on Conrod Straight during the race, hitting a reported.
The troubles for DJR didn't finish at Bathurst though. On their way back to Brisbane after the race, the car towing the trailer with the crashed Falcon actually crashed and inflicted even further damage to the wrecked race car. The Falcon, dubbed "Greens Stuffed", was later broken up and used as paperweights.
Dick Johnson Racing then built a new XE Falcon to run in the 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship. Johnson's consistent run saw him finish no lower than third at each round while winning in the wet at Surfers Paradise. This saw Dick Johnson win his third ATCC and the final ATCC to be run under the locally developed Group C rules. During the ABC's coverage of the final round at the Adelaide International Raceway where Johnson finished a close third behind race winner Allan Grice and Peter Brock, commentator Will Hagon noted that following the championship trail in 1984 had seen the Johnson team cover more than 20,000 km. Although Johnson won the championship, and pointed to the cars reliability, he did acknowledge that other top contenders not running the full series did help his championship cause.