Mistaken Identity?

“Who do you think you are, Dick Johnson?”!

“No,” I replied, “he is”, as I jerked a thumb toward the motor sport legend beside me in the passenger seat.

My questioner was an irate official at the Mallala gate, who had inadvertently delivered the funniest moment, among many, in my 17 years working for Dick Johnson.

It was 1993, the first year the Falcon and Commodore Touring Cars had returned to the national competition, and which drew an enormous crowd to the rural South Australian circuit.

Approaching the track on race morning we were met with a long traffic queue, stacked back past the Adelaide side of the small Mallala township, itself several kilometres short of the track.

Time and traffic crawled on until it was clear we were going to miss the morning Warm Up … no big deal for me … but a bit of an issue for my passengers, Johnson and John Bowe.

With the threat looming that neither Shell Falcon would make the session, and some encouragement from Dick, I went past the crawling traffic down the other side of the road which was clear of traffic, toward the circuit gate.

As we approached, we could see that officials were allowing only one line of traffic into the track through the ‘in’ gate, leaving the ‘out’ gate clear in case someone wanted to leave.

I aimed for the ‘exit’ gate.

Not unreasonably, one of the gate officials took exception to this rather unorthodox -- not to mention unauthorised -- entry to Mallala, and stood in front of our fast approaching car, hand raised in the universal signal to ‘Stop’.

We came to a dusty halt in front of the clearly agitated gate official, who came around to my driver’s window and uttered the now immortal words, “Who do you think you are, Dick Johnson?”!

Laughter erupted around me inside the car, almost drowning out my quick reply.

Needless to say, we made the Warm Up … though I seem to recall Tony Longhurst, caught in the same traffic tailback, didn’t.

There were many memorable moments working for Dick back in the day.

One he probably doesn’t even know about, concerns a Penthouse Pet.

In those day, the Shell Girls were a fixture at every touring car race, as part of the series sponsor’s promotional activities. Run by the savvy Sharon Phipps, the girls changed from round to round, as Sharon recruited locally.

One year at Lakeside, I am guessing either 1991 or 1992, one of the local promo girls turned out to be that month’s Penthouse Pet, a fact she was keen to promote.

Unbeknownst to Dick, she personalised the centrespread of the magazine to him, leaving it as a gift – a parting gift, as it turned out. Although the young lady in question was front and centre on the Saturday, she didn’t front at all on Sunday – much to Sharon’s chagrin and an all-too-common occurrence with the Shell girls.

I remember Sharon having to don the uniform several times when staff didn’t turn up.

Meanwhile, back at Lakeside on the Sunday, the ‘personalised’ Penthouse sat around on the table in the office of the DJR truck, where I happened to be working, when I saw one of the team’s notoriously conservative sponsors walking up the stairs toward me.

Figuring the last thing he needed to see was a Penthouse magazine centerspread personalised to Dick, I grabbed the magazine and shoved it under my folder and laptop, out of sight.

With no way of moving without drawing attention to it, I chatted away with the sponsor until he left, at which point I quickly shoved the Penthouse into an under-seat storage bin. It might still be there, for all I know!

Lakeside was the scene of another memorable moment, this time in a celebration of Dick’s 50^th birthday.

It was 1995 and Shell had organised a big party for Dick and the team, and kindly invited the wider Touring Car paddock.

Meanwhile, Dick’s crew – I know who, but I won’t name them! – had engaged a stripper to make a surprise appearance to mark the occasion, and she dutifully turned up at the appointed hour beside the DJR truck, a long coat hiding the Nurse’s uniform she planned to dispense with during her show.

Naturally, she assumed this was a normal booking, where a dozen or so (almost always) men would be in attendance. No-one had told her that she would be performing in a giant marquee in front several hundred people!

She certainly wasn’t too happy about it and, I gotta say, up on stage she didn’t look like she was enjoying herself very much either.

Meanwhile, as the music played the stripper onto centre stage, I happened to be standing next to Alan Jones and his son Christian, then about 16 years old.

Alan took one look at what was happening and, glancing at Christian, muttered: “He’s too young to see this!”

Of course it was the ‘90s … none of that would happen today!

Pic: Russell Martin

Bathurst was the scene of some incredible moments on track, working with DJR, both good and bad, and several equally memorable moments off it.

With the advent of RaceCam, Dick became almost as well known for his quips and humorous remarks, as for his success on the track.

Back then, the commentators actually talked to the drivers during the race (!), and in the pits we could always tell when they were doing so, because Dick’s pace would drop off by about a second a lap.

Among his many memorable quips, perhaps most famously at Winton in 1990, during a mid-race chat with Seven Network commentator Mike Raymond, Dick got himself into hot water with the promoters of the rural Victorian track when he described it as like: “Running a Marathon around your clothes line”!

That same year, during the Bathurst 1000, Dick was battling for the lead when he came across Kiwi driver Heather Spurle, whose Commodore she shared that year with the affable Bob Jones.

As they raced down the mountain, the Commodore held up his Shell Sierra and, chatting live to the commentators at that time, a frustrated Johnson unkindly described Spurle as being: “As useful as an ashtray on a motorbike”.

It was the heat of the moment, and more a quick quip than an assessment of the hapless New Zealander’s talents behind the wheel.

But what I remember most was the avalanche of protest letters that was subsequently received by the team, and by Shell. We spent quite some time afterwards, writing letters of apology and pacifying punters ...

Shell’s partnership with Dick goes back almost to the beginning of time.

The oil joint has been an incredible supporter of Dick’s for decades – and still is – and has stuck with him through times, good and bad.

I don’t remember the year, or even why there was a Bathurst Test Day – it certainly wasn’t the usual thing – but I do certainly remember how I got there … it was by the Shell corporate jet!

Like Shell, I was based in Melbourne, and the-then Motorsport Manager, Ross Brodie, decided he’d organise the company plane to take us.

There were maybe half a dozen of us, mostly senior Shell execs, and me, and what would have taken us around 10 hours by road from Melbourne, took just over an hour in jet!

We spent the day trackside at Bathurst, and then jumped back on the jet at the end of the day, back home like it was an ordinary working day …

It was a great experience, but unfortunately somewhat soured my subsequent travels to and from race meetings from that moment on!

Actually, when I think about it, that jet would have been handy that day at Mallala in 1993 … though I would have missed one of my funniest moments of 50 years in the sport!

Pic: Russell Martin

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