James Smith recently caught up with Johnson at a Jim Beam Racing promo day at Eastern Creek and tried his best not to appear too starstruck.

Which road rule really annoys you?
“There’s one that no one ever takes any notice of: keep left unless overtaking. These dills who drive around in the right-hand lane under the speed limit, all they’re doing is frustrating everyone behind them – most of them don’t know what they’re doing anyway. If you’re not passing someone, why be out there? “There’s only one solution that will fix the road toll, and it’s not going to be an overnight solution. It’s a generational thing. Unless we teach people how to drive, we’re never ever going to win. We’re not teaching people how to drive, we’re teaching them how to acquire a license. The education system should start at eight years of age with the theoretical side, and going right through to 14, where they should be sitting behind the steering wheel of a car in a controlled situation to be able to know what to expect next.”
Peter Brock’s death in 2006 must’ve had an immense impact on you. What’s your best memory of him?
“Not only the fact he was an excellent driver and he was a very tenacious sort of a guy, but the fact he was a really fair racer. The great testament to that would’ve been at Lakeside in 1981, which was the last round of the championship. We were one point apart, so whoever beat who was going to be the champion. We were on the front row together, and for the whole race we were never more than a car-length apart. There were any number of times where he could’ve punted me off the road, but he didn’t because he was a fair racer. If he couldn’t beat me fair and square, he wasn’t going to beat me. We finished a car-length apart and I won the championship.“When you beat ‘Brocky’, you knew damn well you’d beaten one of the best. At the end of the day, we never stooped to foul play to come out on top. All the years we raced together, wheel to wheel, side by side, we never ever swapped paint.”
You were such serious rivals, but did you actually like each other?
“We used to get on really well, but once we put our helmets on and got out on the race track, we were two totally different people again. There was always the fun side of it, but we knew when that stopped. We wouldn’t give each other an inch.”
We nearly lost you in 1983 when you exited Forrest’s Elbow on your top-ten shootout lap. How did you fit through those trees? (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ektTw5lpoyY)
“I remember thinking, ‘I could be in a bit of trouble here.’ I went through the trees and I’d stopped and thought, ‘Thank God for that.’ I can’t remember anything from getting out of the car to the time I was walking up the back of the pits with my wife and John French, who was partnering me in my car, and his wife. Maybe that’s because, when I was sitting at the top of the hill, the next car around was the final car to contest the top-ten shootout, and it was Peter Brock. He stopped and gave me a lift back to the pits and maybe that’s why I’ve forgotten. That’s the sort of relationship we had with Brocky in those situations and I would’ve done the same thing for him … I’m sure he would’ve forgot something like who’d given him a lift, too.”
– James Smith
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