A visit with Junior Johnson at North Wilkesboro
For a guy with a titanium pole in his back, Junior Johnson gets around pretty well.
Oh, he’s sore and has to take pain medication, but he said that was to be expected. Doctors told him he would be somewhat uncomfortable for quite some time, but his latest back surgery, his third, would solve his problems once and for all.
“And that’s fine with me,” said Johnson, the legendary NASCAR driver and team owner.
My buddy Tom Higgins, the retired Charlotte Observer motorsports writer, and I paid Johnson a visit recently at his mansion-farm-race shop complex in Hamptonville, N.C., not far from North Wilkesboro at the foot of the mountains in the western part of the state.
Johnson still tends to his many enterprises. About the only thing he has given up because of his latest surgery is driving his tractor around his property.
“I’m done with that,” he said.
What is obviously very important to him is the continued cultivation of his 16-year-old son Robert’s racing career.
What was once a tractor shed on Johnson’s property has been converted into a small, clean and efficient race shop (it comes complete with an office) that houses two of Robert’s gleaming white-and-red Sportsman cars. Johnson’s son competes regularly at Caraway Speedway, where he’s already been a winner.
On this particular day a handful of personable, friendly guys who assist in the Johnson racing efforts were preparing for a test session,
which would be conducted when Robert returned from school.
It would be held at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Wait a minute – the track hasn’t been a part of NASCAR since 1996. The last time I saw it, it was virtually crumbling, with weeds and uncut grass permeating the property.
How could anyone test at a defunct speedway where vegetation sprung through cracks on the asphalt racing surface? It wasn’t long before Higgins and I found out.
He, Johnson and I drove to the track. I was privileged to drive the Mercedes Benz owned by Johnson’s wife, Lisa. The car can do everything but sing opera.
Johnson said he had cut a deal with the track’s owner, Bruton Smith, that would allow him to convert North Wilkesboro into a test facility for his son. Suffice it to say there wasn’t much money involved, if any.
When we arrived at the track many memories of past NASCAR days at North Wilkesboro flowed for Higgins and I – which you might expect from a couple of guys who covered races there for years.
The track was in much better shape than the last time I had seen it. Sure, there was rust, crumbling cement and all of that, but the only
vegetation overgrowth was limited to the backstretch wooden bleachers that were once known, ironically, as the “Junior Johnson Grandstand.”
We took a lap around the track in the Mercedes. We saw the wooden press box, the small infield media center with victory lane on its roof, the garage area, the antiquated VIP suites in turns 3 and 4 and the much more modern ones along the backstretch. They were abandoned and lonely.
But there was something else.
There was no wild, tall grass protruding from the cracks in the racing surface. The infield had been meticulously groomed. A sweeper vehicle circled the track removing dust and debris in preparation for the test session.
Indeed, race cars could run there.
“I’m the one who has done that,” Johnson said. “I had the grass removed from the track surface, had it cut in the infield and have seen to it that the track is suitable for racing.”
Obviously he had made it a place where, at the least, his son could hone his racing skills.
But did he have other plans, which, perhaps, could return North Wilkesboro to the world of auto racing competition in some form?
Johnson wouldn’t say.
Somehow his silence said a lot.
