Junior Johnson recalls secrets of draft at DIS

By BRANT JAMES
Published February 17, 2005

DAYTONA BEACH - Junior Johnson had not covered aerodynamics by the time he quit school in eighth grade.

But he could tell something incredible was happening when he nuzzled his otherwise oafish Chevrolet behind the Pontiacs of Bobby Johns and Fireball Roberts in practices for the 1960 Daytona 500.

" " Cotton Owens came along, and I dropped over behind him and all of a sudden I was running all over him, half throttle," Johnson remembered. "I was like, "Hell, I can run with him."'

The rest was history. And physics. The draft was discovered at Daytona International Speedway. Slowly, drivers learned that cars driving nose-to-tail were faster on the high, 33-degree-banked, 2.5-mile track. Engineers eventually found new ways to make cars more able to "suck up" to each other in the draft and maneuver through the slipstreams cars created by punching holes in the air.

All Johnson knew was that he had a secret. And he tried hard to keep it.

"I knew if I went running my mouth, everybody in the ... garage area would know what I'd figured out," said Johnson, who let crew chief Ray Fox think the drastic improvement came from a mechanical adjustment.

Observant Pontiac drivers realized what Johnson was doing just before the race on Feb.14, but he stayed close to the leaders despite his horsepower deficiency by mimicking their pit strategies.

"They were sitting there trying to figure out why that ... Chevrolet that was 22 miles per hour slower than they were was outrunning them," Johnson said. "And when they figured it out they sent Jack ( Smith ) out there to pull Bobby up to me and he could outrun me. That car was faster than my car. But (Johns) held on to Jack and he was going to go and leave me and that was a mistake."

Johns passed Johnson on Lap 170 of 200, but with 10 left, Johnson had managed to draft in behind Johns in Turn 1 as the two-car train passed. The subsequent burst of turbulence sucked the rear windshield out of his car and sent him through the grass.

"I came back around a lap ahead of him," Johnson said. "They tried to hook (Johns) back up, but I was so far round he couldn't catch up."

Johnson beat Johns by 23 seconds, cutting a path that drivers still follow today.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is so confident in the draft that he thinks he can compensate for what has been a slow No.8 Chevrolet. Others are so confident that their rough driving at 190 mph has evolved from bump-drafting to what Jeff Gordon calls "slam-drafting."

"Sometimes you get a really big push and you've got a lot of momentum, you've got to judge how hard you can hit somebody," he said. "If you square up on them, you can hit him really hard, but you have to remember it can do damage to the front grill of your car.

Gordon said to avoid whiplash, he has learned to brace his neck backward into a safety collar when making a fast push.

Most drivers consider aggressive bump-drafting an acceptable nuisance if done late in a race as a move to win. They have much less patience for the kind of contact in corners that was prevalent last fall at Talladega and in Saturday's Bud Shootout.

"I'll tell you it won't work for 500 miles around here," Daytona 500 polesitter Dale Jarrett said. "Something big is going to happen. Whenever they do it and something does happen, they don't need to get out and blame somebody else. They're the ones creating it."

SPARK PLUGS: Teams including Greg Biffle 's No.16 Ford experienced problems with tires again on Wednesday. Goodyear hauled away more than 300 from a reported bad batch last week. ... Earnhardt moved up the speed charts to 12th in the afternoon practice as teams began to draft. Jeremy Mayfield led practice (190.646 mph) as Dodges posted five of the top seven times.

[Last modified February 17, 2005, 21:42:37]