A YEAR ago they had one foot in the grave. Now they are on top of the world. Dick Johnson Racing climbed its own mountain when Steve Johnson sat the team on top of the time sheets in the first of the sessions leading to Sunday’s Bathurst 1000.
Johnson left some of the form teams in his smoke when he topped the time sheets on the 35th of his 36 practice laps.
And for the driver known as Junior – in deference to his father – the acclaim achieved was not without personal sacrifice.
Johnson has lost 22kg since he lapped Mt Panorama last year some 0.6sec off the pace.
Extra weight in cars equates to slower speed and Johnson realised that if the team was to get back to the top of the sport – a position his dad enjoyed for decades – he had to shed the kilos.
Marriage was his inspiration. Wife Bree kept a watchful eye and Johnson, whose love of food is well known, started his diet.
"It’s no secret. It’s not so much what I eat as how much. I eat smaller amounts now," he said, in what will be a disappointment for all the nation’s diet studios. "The wife cracked the whip and getting rid of 22 kilos out of the car makes quite a difference."
The real secret to the team’s success has been the technical alignment with last year’s Bathurst winners, the high-flying Triple Eight team and the sponsorship from Jim Beam when Dick Johnson Racing was at death’s door.
The team went public with their financial woes last year and Jim Beam was the white knight to the rescue, the start of a resurrection which has Johnson Sr pretty confident of his team’s future.
For the moment, though, his son is the star. The Jim Beam cars have been quick but unlucky this season.
Even last month at Sandown, when Johnson and Will Davison paired up, they were prominent in the lead-up but finished last when a brake problem stopped their car after just a few laps.
Understandably Johnson is cautious about his chances.
"We have just got to hope we had our problems at Sandown and they don’t come back here," he said.
Johnson acknowledged that the technical deal with Triple Eight, which supplies them with engines, has made a major difference.
"This car is totally different to the one we drove last year and that’s all to do with the advances Triple Eight has made over the past two or three years," he said.
Behind Johnson came some of the more fancied weekend teams.
Garth Tander set the second-quickest time for Toll Racing, trying his best to forget he didn’t get behind the wheel last year when co-driver Mark Skaife was cleaned up on the first lap.
Third was Mark Winterbottom, with co-driver Steve Richards saying the FPR Falcon is the quickest car he has driven in 14 outings at Mt Panorama.
The Jeld-Wen driver and Dancing With the Stars contestant James Courtney was fourth yesterday with Courtney fielding more questions about his dancing "harder than I thought" than his driving "quietly confident".
Further practice sessions will be held this morning ahead of qualifying in the afternoon. The race starts at 10.30am on Sunday.
Source: foxsports.com.au
