SportsCar Feature: The Real Deal

This article first appeared in the May, 2016 edition of SportsCar Magazine. SCCA members can read the current and past editions of SportCar digitally here after logging into their account; To become an SCCA member and get SportsCar mailed to your home address monthly in addition to the digital editions, click here.

Roger Johnson has become known as the ace of Solo course design, but there’s far more to the story than that

Do you know Roger Johnson? The real Roger Johnson? It’s one of the fun quirks of SCCA’s Solo community, knowing which Roger is which. If you ask Roger H. Johnson, “Which Roger are you,” his response will be, “I’m the real Roger Johnson, the other is merely famous.” This retort long ago helped nickname Roger “The Real” Johnson (Roger H.) versus Roger “The Famous” Johnson (Roger E.).

It all started at the 1986 Solo National Championships. Roger “The Real” was making his debut at the event while Roger “The Famous” was tearing up B Stock. Roger “The Real” also happened to be entered in B Stock, but he wasn’t doing quite as well as his name twin.

“When people heard I was Roger Johnson, they instantly started congratulating me, and I was wondering why,” he laughs.

The confusion remains to this day, so just to be clear, for the rest of this story the only Roger Johnson we’re talking about is the real one.

Since that first Solo Nationals appearance, Johnson has become famous in his own right. He’s taken his experience as a professional graphic designer for Boeing and applied it to teaching the art of course design. After creating the Solo Course Design Manual in the mid 1990s, he has traveled across the country giving presentations on course design. His in-person expertise has been requested as far north as Alaska and as far south as Chile.

Out of the blue, Johnson was contacted by ex-Formula 1 driver Eliseo Salazar. The Chilean national hero was creating his own motorsports venue in Santiago and heard through a friend in the U.S. that Johnson was the king of autocross design. A couple of phone calls and e-mails later and Johnson was on his way to Chile to setup his course design for Salazar. Of course, when you’re designing for a site you’ve never been to in a different hemisphere, there’s bound to be complications, but it wasn’t anything Salazar couldn’t fix.

“We were setting up and the way I’d drawn the course, the cars went in one gate and came back through another,” Johnson shares. “Well, one of the gates we were going to use was welded shut. I said, ‘OK, I can redesign the course,’ but he said, ‘No, no, give me a minute.’ He gets on the phone, makes a call, and within an hour somebody was out there with a saw and made the gate functional again. There were all sorts of wires and they cut it all. What Elizeo wants, Elizeo gets!”

As Salazar’s program grew, Johnson saw an opportunity for Chilean drivers to come experience American-style autocross at the Tire Rack Solo National Championships. So, for the past two years, Johnson has helped Salazar’s series champion get to Lincoln, Neb., to take part in the Solo National Championships.

Johnson’s passion for Solo began with his career at Boeing in Seattle, Wash. He was a member of the Boeing Employees Autosports Club (BEAC), which held events in one of the company parking lots. It was through BEAC that he met Karen Babb, who introduced him to SCCA and course design, and also convinced him to make the trek to his first Solo Nationals in 1986.

“I drove with Karen and the gang from Seattle in my 944 Turbo Porsche. That car was so far out of my price range that I couldn’t afford a house, so my license plate said ‘MY HOUSE’ in German!”

Johnson was blown away by the size of Solo Nationals, if not a little intimidated. In B Stock, he finished 34 out of 36 and readily admits it was because two people didn’t show up.

In 1991, at Babb’s urging, he submitted his first Solo Nationals course design for the south course in Salina, Kan. It was accepted, but there was one problem: Johnson had no plans to actually attend the event.

“I wasn’t smart enough to know that you had to attend, because you had to set up the course,” jokes Johnson. “I just wanted to submit a design. They picked me and asked me when I would arrive, and I thought, ‘I don’t have enough vacation days or enough money to go.’ Karen went and set it up for me that first year. I’ve attended every Solo Nationals I’ve submitted a design for since then!”

While his course design resume is long, his list of Solo Nationals trophies is, well, non-existent. He attributes part of that to the lack of free time he has available to work on his car and driving, but he also points out that designing the courses you run can be a disadvantage.

“The thing about designing your own course is you design things into it and believe that’s what they are, but don’t look to see if they really are that way once you’re in the car,” he explains. “You’ll often get fooled by your own course, because you’re so sure you already know how it works. A person who has no idea how it works looks at it really hard and finds the line. In addition, the person who designs the course is involved in the setup and maintenance of it, so you’re pretty distracted the day of the event.”

The 1995 Solo Nationals was a memorable exception to this conundrum. Johnson drove his personal best on the North Course he designed for Forbes Field. “I was 28th out of 45 cars the first day on the South Course, and then, on my course, I jumped up to like 15th or something. It just worked for me. It was fun because some of the hot shoes were coming up to me after my first run like, ‘So, Roger, tell me what you’re doing.’”

That 1995 course was one of Johnson’s favorites, not just because he did well, but because of the compliments he received. He recalls fellow drivers shouting their praise as he walked by, even if he was in downtown Topeka getting dinner.

The lack of trophies doesn’t get Johnson down. After all, he’s real, not famous, right? He reckons his time will come soon enough. For now, his prize is the pure joy he gets from competing with his friends.

“I go for the experience,” he smiles. “I love the people. I love the event itself. Every time I enter and sit in that car I believe I have a chance to trophy, and I drive like it.”

Thanks to one of his fellow Soloists, Johnson has a very special trophy of a different kind: a custom five-string bass built by Kiesel Guitars.

“I friended Jeff Kiesel on Facebook and he asked me to like his business, Carvin Guitars. They will build guitars to your spec. I talked to him at Nationals about building a one-off, because the Kiesel line of Carvin Guitars can do that. I submitted my drawings to him of what I wanted it to look like and he built it. I got it a couple months ago. It sounds really good!”

Johnson does, in fact, have one of the most prestigious honors SCCA can offer; in 2015 he was inducted into the SCCA Hall of Fame for his contributions to the Solo community.

“It was shocking to get the phone call,” he recalls. “It’s something that I’ve dreamed would happen, so it was exciting in that respect. It means a lot to me. I still get choked up talking about it. My acceptance speech was a total mess because I couldn’t even talk.”

The man who wrote the book (quite literally) on Solo course design anticipates retiring from Boeing in the near future, which will give him more time to work on his Street Touring R Honda S2000 and his driving craft. When that day comes, he warns his “fellow mid-packers” to watch out!

Johnson isn’t likely to retire from teaching course design anytime soon, however, but with the growing demand for his presentations, he’s coming across a problem of time management. “I need to start teaching someone else to give the presentation,” he jokes. Maybe there’s room for a third Roger Johnson after all – although maybe that would get confusing.

Words by Erin Cechal
Image by Julie Soefer