SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Thanks to the generosity of car owners Carole and Alton Palmer, one of DIRTcar superstar Jack Johnson’s last rides is now on exhibit in the Racing in New York gallery of the Saratoga Automobile Museum.
“The car was barely in the door when museum visitors started relating memories of Jack’s classic battles with CD Coville at Albany-Saratoga and Lou Lazzaro at Fonda to our staff and docents,” said exhibit coordinator Ron Hedger. “The car, which Jack drove for the Palmer’s at Syracuse, triggers all sorts of memories of one of dirt modified racing’s biggest stars.”
Johnson will go in the history books as one of DIRTcar’s all-time great heroes, as likely to win on the far-flung DIRTcar Modified Tour as he was at his home track, Fonda Speedway.
A Fonda Fairgrounds winner in 34 seasons stretching from 1971 to his final score on May 30, 2009, a season that also saw him win a major event in Sharon, Ohio, Johnson’s 149 wins top another Fonda hero, Lou Lazzaro, who visited victory lane 113 times. Fonda was also the scene of a crash that ended a career that saw Johnson elected to multiple Halls of Fame.
In addition to his Fonda victories, Johnson scored 90 times at Albany-Saratoga Speedway, where his battles with C.D. Coville were legendary, and scores of wins at the Central New York dirt tracks. He was also a six-time Mr. DIRT champion, besting such luminaries as Bob McCreadie, Brett Hearn, Alan and Danny Johnson and Will Cagle.
Johnson also made history as the first New Yorker to win the finale of Super DIRT Week on the famed New York State Fair mile in Syracuse, winning the seventh running in 1979 and backing it up with another victory in 1984.
The familiar orange No. 12A joins another recent addition to the Racing in New York gallery, Ken Gypsum’s restored 1937 Ford flatback sedan that raced at tracks around the Capital District in the early 1960’s. While both are stock cars, the contrast in technology and safety innovations is amazing.
The Saratoga Automobile Museum, located on the Avenue of the Pines in the Saratoga Spa State Park, is open Tuesday-Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. More information on the museum and the featured Golub and Dammerman galley exhibit displaying the cars of Rob Dyson, is available online at www.saratogaautomuseum.org.