The Wide World of Dirt

If you only pored over Racing Reference, you would be led to believe that Junior Johnson closed up his shop, and he wasn’t active in the sport for over three calendar years.

That’s actually not the case.

While Johnson’s shop closed up at the beginning of the 1971 season, he kept in contact with people in the industry, trying to find business and stay in racing.

He got his chance in the World 600 when Charlotte Motor Speedway Vice President Richard Howard asked him to prepare a car for Charlie Glotzbach, one of Junior’s former drivers.

The two grabbed the pole for the crown jewel event, but a crash on lap 234 ended their day. Howard wasn’t done with Junior yet, asking him to be the manager of his race team.

Essentially, Junior owned and operated a team again while Howard wrote the checks.

Running 14 races in 1971, Junior and Charlie found great success. They won a 500-lapper at Bristol, even though Glotzbach tapped out and let relief driver Friday Hassler take the checkered flag. After seven top-5s, Junior wanted more, letting Glotzbach go.

Johnson and Howard brought on superstar driver Bobby Allison, the forebearer of the famous Alabama Gang.

Allison, coming off of a 10-win season with three different car owners, looked for some consistency, something Johnson could offer.

Junior and Bobby were fast right out of the gate, finishing runner-up in three of the first five races before rolling into Atlanta.

Allison led a good chunk of the race before Bobby Isaac’s car came alive in the late stages, but towards the very end of the race, AJ Foyt found his way by Isaac with Allison in tow.

Foyt and Allison raced close as the race wound down until the Alabama native dashed by the series’ defending champion with four laps remaining to steal the victory.

Their winning ways wouldn’t stop the next week at Bristol, leading all but about 50 laps while putting four laps on the rest of the field.

More solid runs followed, but a 45th-place effort at Talladega stopped them in their tracks.

They bounced back the next week with a runner-up in the World 600, putting them on an insane run through the rest of the season.

Through the final 20 races of 1972, Junior and Bobby finished worse than 6th once. 

One time.

Allison stomped the field at the summer Dover race, and after going winless through the next four races, the #12 team won three straight races at Bristol, Trenton, and Atlanta, the Bristol win being especially brutal as they matched their prowess from the spring.

The Coca-Cola racing team raced to two more top-5s after that before rattling off two more strong victories at Nashville and the Southern 500.

While they hoped to repeat their performance at Dover, they bowed out with a blown engine just past the 300-lap mark, finishing 20th.

Bobby followed that up with two runner-up finishes on his way to scoring his last two wins of the season at Charlotte and Rockingham before wrapping the season up with a fourth-place finish at Texas World Speedway.

With a staggering 5.3 average finish on the season, it would be reasonable to expect that this led to Junior and Bobby to score their first title together, but it wasn’t.

The points system in that time was a lot more convoluted, and due to title rival Richard Petty completing more laps on the season and having an even more mind-boggling 4.7 average finish, Junior and Bobby were left empty-handed.

Despite their immense success together, Allison parted ways with Johnson and Howard at season’s end to run his own team, and the team lucked into their next driver.

Cale Yarborough entered the sport at the ripe age of 18 in 1957, and he became known primarily for doing part-time gigs for teams.

He finally broke through in 1965 when he ran a majority of the schedule for a myriad of teams, winning his first race at Valdosta and finishing 10th in points.

He went back to mostly part-time work in the following years, sacrificing quantity for quality. He teamed up with the Wood Brothers in 1968, exhibiting his superstar potential.

Over the 20 races the team hit the track together, Cale scored 6 wins and 12 top-5s, including wins in the Daytona 500, the Firecracker 400, and the Southern 500.

After Ford withdrew their factory support from the sport for 1971, Cale found himself without a ride and spent most of the next two years driving open-wheeled cars while doing spot gigs in stock cars.

Johnson gave Yarborough a call, and the two struck a deal to race together on Howard’s team for 1973. The partnership proved to be fruitful almost immediately.

Though the two failed to finish the first two races, they got in a groove, scoring two top-5s before they utterly annihilated the field at Bristol. Cale led every single lap of the 500-lap race and put two laps on the field for good measure. An all-time performance.

The next five races were a rollercoaster with three finishes of sixth or better, but two terrible DNFs at Darlington and Talladega made it difficult to stay in the title hunt.

Junior and Cale continued their short-track domination at Nashville where they led all but four laps on their way to their second win of the year.

The few good runs that followed opened up the floodgates of trouble as the team finished 19th or worse three times over a four-race stretch starting at Riverside.

Bristol was the last race in the stretch, and they were favored to win again before a crash on lap 344 gave way for title rival Benny Parsons to take the win.

Over the final 10 races of the 1973 season, Junior and Cale mounted a charge toward the championship. They put together eight top-10s during that span with a crash at Dover leaving them with their eighth and final DNF of the season.

Johnson’s team won the Southern 500 and the fall Charlotte race for the second season in a row, but the two couldn’t overcome Parsons’ points lead, losing to him by 65 points.

If Yarborough doesn’t get caught up in that incident at Bristol in the summer, they may have been the ones to hoist the Winston Cup in Rockingham at season’s end.

Junior and Cale rode into 1974 with a full head of steam, parlaying their good championship performance into 4 wins in the first 10 races alongside 9 top-5s.

That gave way to a stretch where the duo left the track on wreckers or with checkers. DNFs at Nashville, Charlotte, and Michigan were matched with wins at Dover and Riverside.

That’s when Junior took matters into his own hands.

Junior called Richard Howard and told him he wanted to buy a majority stake in the team he had put most of the work into, and they came to an agreement.

But, Junior wasn’t done.

Allan Brooke fielded a team for Canadian Earl Ross for three races in 1973 before going for a more expanded schedule in 1974.

The crew ran strong for the most part, netting two top 5s and only one finish worse than 13th in their first six starts.

Junior saw potential in Ross and bought the team from Brooks to run the remainder of the schedule as a teammate to Yarborough, which was practically unheard of at the time.

After three calendar years of not formally owning a team, Johnson’s team was re-christened as Junior Johnson & Associates, and his two cars were the No. 52 driven by Canadian rookie Earl Ross and the No. 11 driven by Cale Yarborough.

The rest of Ross’ season under Johnson was good, all things considered. Ross never finished worse than 22nd over the final 15 races, hitting a stride in the final six races.

Two top-5s at Dover and North Wilkesboro gave the Canadian confidence headed into Martinsville where Ross started 11th on the grid.

After seeing his teammate retire after a dominant day, Ross seized the opportunity, grabbing the lead on lap 422 and never letting it go.

He crossed the finish line for his first NASCAR win, becoming the first Canadian driver to win in NASCAR’s premier series.

A 20th-place finish at Charlotte threatened Ross’ momentum before a pair of 8th-place runs at Rockingham and Ontario salvaged the run. Ross finished the season 8th in points with 1 win, 5 top-5s, and 10 top-10s.

Yarborough continued the success he built with Howard to start the season. Some of that was due in part to Johnson and Yarborough retaining Johnson’s old crew chief, Herb Nab.

Nab left Johnson before the 1970 season but worked with Junior while he ran Howard’s team for the next few seasons before reuniting with his old driver when he bought the team before the Firecracker 400.

Yarborough was a force at Bristol, leading over 300 laps on his way to his first win with Junior in just their second race. The two followed that up with another win at Nashville.

The crowning achievement for the season came on Labor Day when Cale delivered Junior the win in the race he couldn’t conquer himself: the Southern 500.

Yarborough led all but 1 of the final 167 laps on his way to victory at his hometown track, and while the two enjoyed their victory, a terrible stretch of results awaited them.

Junior and Cale failed to finish four of the next five races, a win at North Wilkesboro being their only solace. The aforementioned blown engine at Martinsville was especially painful, finishing 11th after leading 288 of 421 laps he completed.

Cale tried to bounce back at Rockingham by leading the most laps, but David Pearson passed him with close to 80 to go and scooted to victory lane while Cale stewed in 2nd.

A third-place finish at Ontario wasn’t enough to overcome the margin to Petty in the points race as Cale played the bridesmaid to “The King” yet again.

Even with the best average finish and tying Richard for the most wins, Cale and Junior just couldn’t find a way to get it done.

Though the two came to an agreement to race together the next year, the two ran into sponsorship issues.

Carling sponsored both of Johnson’s cars after his merger of the two teams, but the company left at season’s end, causing Junior to shut down Ross’ team.

Focusing on getting sponsorship for his golden goose, Junior and Cale had to sit out a few races throughout the ‘75 season to keep the team afloat.

This included two of the first five races, and to make matters worse, the team also lost Nab’s services for the season, causing Junior to hop on top of the pit box.

Through a win at Rockingham and a strong run at North Wilkesboro in the spring, Johnson convinced his old friends at Holly Farms to sponsor the car for the remainder of the season.

Inconsistency marred the rest of the season for Junior and Cale. They either finished the race in the top 5, or they didn’t finish the race.

That’s no joke, either.

They finished the 1975 season with 13 top-5s and 14 DNFs over a 27-race schedule.

The season still had its highs. Yarborough thumped the field in the series’ second trip to Nashville, leading 385 of 420 laps on his way to a victory where he lapped the field.

Junior and Cale also brought their winning car from the spring back to Rockingham for the fall race, and Cale drove like no one else was on the track with him, leading almost 400 of the 492-lap event on his way to a sweep of the track.

The win gave the team some confidence going into 1976 where they would attempt a full schedule again with Holly Farms pledging to sponsor and Nab returning to the pit box.

Some extra motivation was provided in the form of Petty winning nearly half of the scheduled races on the way to an unheard-of sixth championship.

Junior knew those were just more dominoes added to the line that he needed to make fall.