Jul. 5—JAMESTOWN — When Spencer Johnson won the Wissota Street Stock feature on June 8, it was an emotional experience for him and his family.
“That meant the world to me. I didn’t take the time to express it to the fans how much that memorial race meant to me,” Johnson said. “Don Gumke, the one that it’s named after, was my first employer out of college. I worked for him for two different stints and I always enjoyed Don’s company. He was a simple man but he had the right idea, and it was always fun to be around him as well. One of the other guys that the memorial was for was Johnny C Junior, Johnny Corell Jr., unfortunately, we lost him just recently and he was the best man at my wedding. We got married at the race track. So that really, it hit home after all the excitement of winning the race, it settled down and I got to thinking about that stuff.
“It meant the world to me and the other biggest thing was my son was there and he got to celebrate it with me in victory lane,” Johnson said. “When I was winning back in the day when he was just a baby and a young boy, my wife and the kids were over in the pits and not up front. He rode on the car all the way from the pit area all the way to victory lane to help celebrate.”
The win was Johnson’s first since 2011 and came on a night when the Jamestown Speedway honored legendary racer Don Gumke. While working for Gumke, Johnson said Gumke helped him get his start in the sport.
“I wanted a race engine and Don was losing his mechanic to a new job and he put his arm around me one day and said, ‘I got a plan, lemme throw this across to you, what do you think?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ From that point on, I got good engines and worked for Don and paid it off that way with my paychecks that I got from Don,” Johnson said.
Johnson said when he took the lead with 14 laps to go, he was going to fight as hard as possible to win the race. He said he was nervous after a restart late in the race but he was able to hold off the other drivers.
“It was a huge relief knowing I could finally finish the deal,” Johnson said. “There had been a few races that I had led but been in contention. I thought I had lost that ability to get it done and that I was always gonna be … I could run in the top five, I just couldn’t finish the deal. The door opened, I drove through it as quickly as I could, got the lead and never looked back. It gives you a little bit of confidence that, yup, you could still get it done. But you gotta have that racing luck. That’s gotta be part of the program as well.”
Between finishing the heat race in second and starting the feature in eighth, Johnson said he worked on his rear suspension, which helps stabilize the car, to help him move into the top spot.
As of July 4, Johnson is sitting in first in the Wissota Street Stock class standings with 384 points.
Johnson is joined in the standings by his son, Jordan, who is currently in 14th place. Johnson said he takes a tremendous amount of pride in the fact that Jordan has built a good relationship with the other drivers and is respected by them.
“I think I enjoy spending time with my son at the race track,” Johnson said. “He races right alongside me in the same class. So I probably wouldn’t have gotten back into it if he hadn’t shown interest. I had officially retired, owning my own stuff way back in 2008, but a few years later, I got him started just to see and he fell in love with the sport so I decided to get back into it myself.”
Johnson said the races at the track are all usually competitive.
“Everybody’s got a real good engine these days,” Johnson said. “Everybody’s got real good handle on their shock packages and that type of stuff. We all run within a couple tenths of each other all the time. If you look at the lap times, it’s just kind of crazy that we’re not running each other over all the time.”
Even though Jordan has not won a race yet this season, Johnson said he has a gut feeling his son will take the checkered flag in the near future.
Johnson said he did not race in 2017 and 2018 because he was instead spending his time helping Jordan get his racing career off the ground.
“In 2017, I think we still had Jordan’s slingshot, and 2018 I think was when we started putting together the street stock,” Johnson said. ” … I only ran a few races in ’19 to help Jordan shake down his car and make sure that it was going the right direction. It’s kind of hard with a rookie, you don’t really know if they’re giving you good feedback. That’s why I wanted to drive it and see if I agreed with what he was saying and just make sure it was competitive and it is, it’s a competitive car and we built the brand new car for 2020, I think it was.”
Last season, Johnson had four races that he did not finish which he said came from his desire to push the car more than it could go and led to him crashing.
The sport and competing mean a lot to Johnson but he said his family means more. He will miss the last night of racing in September because his daughter, MacKenzie, is getting married.
“I don’t know if I could pull off the championship this year even if I was to lead it all the way up because my daughter gets married on championship night,” Johnson said. “I’d have to have me a pretty good lead and with the point program that they have now, I don’t know how many points I’d have to be ahead in order to guarantee me not to have to be here for the championship night.”
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