A pair of brothers from Bakersfield, California — Cody Johnson (26) and Nicholas Johnson (1N) — dueled to the finish. Cody barely eked out the hobby stock feature win over his younger sibling at California’s Merced Speedway on July 12.
The elder brother led the entire feature while Nicholas put on a show. Nicholas started in 11th and worked his way to the front, looking as if he might outrun his Cody at the end.
“I didn’t know it was the last lap — I couldn’t see the flagman waving the white flag,” Nicholas, 19, said. “If I knew, I would have given him a slide job and won the race.”
Cody felt it was his race to win.
“When he told me that he could have beaten me, I just told him that couldn’t have happened,” said Cody, 20. “I was just plain faster than he was.”
Why Nicholas couldn’t see the flagman was his own fault, according to Cody. The visor extending across the upper windshield of the car Nicholas raced was just a bit longer than his brother’s, thus slicing away a bit of his view.
“Whenever we make a new visor, we trace the pattern out, and then we cut the aluminum,” Cody said. “I guess he didn’t trace it or trim it right.”
Both brothers, Cody Johnson and Nicholas Johnson, work on their own cars — IMCA stock cars in addition to their hobby stocks. Other family members also race. Brother Stephen, 16, sits behind the wheel of a hobby stock. Brother Ethan, 10, drives a mini dwarf. Their father, Chad, steers an IMCA stock car. Their grandfather, Steve, is a regular in the American Stock class at Bakersfield Speedway.
“We have at least six cars out there,” Cody said of how many Johnsons you can find at a track at a given time. “Dad pays for our needs. We pay for our wants. That’s how it works.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
