Sonoma

[lugnut]

Jayski says that Billy Johnson will drive the 43 at Sonoma. I guess Bubba is not a road course driver.

[jlp4345]

This is all Ford fellas, reeks of it. Says that he's a Ford road course trainer, and he's a development driver for Ford Performance. I just don't understand how Ford has so much pull with RPM. I really don't get that. If they were gonna put a road course ace in for 1 race I can name off several that would be way more qualified in my opinion and actually have Cup starts. Robby Gordon, Marcose Ambrose, Boris Said, Ron Fellows, just to name a few.

Jason

[pmossberg]

I don't have a problem with this. And given the road race, I'm not convinced having or not having any Cup starts means anything.
The guy teaches Cup drivers to run road courses. Maybe he hasn't taught them everything he knows!

From Billy J's bio page, looks like a pretty strong resume to me:

Billy Johnson made his racing debut in 2000 at the age of 13 racing go-karts. The half-Japanese Californian has won multiple championships at the local, regional, to national level. In 2003, Billy moved up into auto racing after winning the Skip Barber Racing School scholarship. The next day he flew to Valencia, Spain and won another scholarship from BMW AG for the inaugural season of the Formula BMW USA championship. In the 2004 F-BMW season, Billy Finished 5th in the championship as well as received the Sportsman of the Year award.

Over the last five years, Billy has raced in the FIA WEC, NASCAR XFinity, IMSA/Tudor/Grand Am Rolex, IMSA Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (CTSCC), Speed World Challenge, Formula Star Mazda Pro, Formula BMW, Skip Barber Regional and National Series, Super Street Time Attack, Redline Time Attack and many import tuner shootouts and competitions for magazines. In those series, Billy acquired 52 wins, 108 top five finishes and an additional 129 top ten finishes. Billy is also a private driving coach for regional and national race series and is hired by Ford to teach advanced road course techniques to their Sprint Cup and Xfinity drivers.

In the past 10 years, Billy has more victories and top-3 podium finishes than any driver in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (CTSCC) Series with 23 wins, 49 podiums, and 60 top five finishes.

Billy has been a serious contender in the NASCAR Xfinity series road courses. He challenged for wins at Montreal in 2012 driving the #60 Roush Fenway Ford Mustang but had to pit from 2nd with 2 laps to go for fuel and finished an impressive 8th place after restarting 21st. In 2013 Billy had a dominant performance at Road America in the #16 Roush Fenway Ford Mustang before a late race accident damaged his car. A few weeks later, Billy made his NASCAR oval debut in the #16 Boston Strong Mustang in Loudon, NH. With only 5 days of oval experience under his belt ever, Johnson finished an impressive 15th place on the lead lap in a field of Nationwide and Cup regulars.

Besides working on his driving career, Billy is a graduate from Cal State University, Fullerton with a degree in Business Administration. Billy also works as a test driver for Ford Motor Company, Multimatic Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, for automobile and tire manufacturers, as a driver for manufacturer demonstration days, and does setup and chassis development for aftermarket tuning companies and race teams.

[pb1945]

I would be thrilled to so see Billy Johnson bring the 43 in for a checkered flag. He has quite a resume. It is not unusual for a good road course driver to step into a good cup car and give it a great ride. Now what can he do with a ( mediocre but improving car ). This has been done many times by drivers like Ron Fellows & Boris Said.

But also quite often a good road racer has tried to take a mid level performer to the front and wound up pushing to hard and crashing the car badly. There's always a first time and Billy could just be the man.

No surprises here if Billy is able to give the 43 a good ride, that would make my Sunday. The 43 camp needs some good news.

Go 43

Dan

[jlp4345]

Yeah I didn't realize the background this guy has, can't believe I never really heard of him, sounds like could be a diamond in the rough when it comes to road racing. He sound really confident on XM today and said he plans on keeping the 43 up front. I also heard he's spent a lot of this week in the simulator, so hopefully he's ready to go, he sounds like he is, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do.

Jason

[pmossberg]

Trust me, I had never heard of him either. I went and did some reading after seeing Jason's first post.

Could be a good day for RPM!

[pmossberg]

Dang, 22nd. I really had hoped for a top ten.

Ah well, on to next week.

And on the up side, perennial road course "ringer" Boris Said finished 29th.