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The {ITAL fast} lane

by Jessica Carreras

For Gary Johnson, being involved with racing was almost more natural than being gay. In fact, long before the now-road racing manager of Dodge Motorsports came out in 2003 in his mid-40s, he knew he wanted to be a racecar driver.
"I think I was in 7th grade and my mother and I were in a meeting with a guidance counselor talking about what kind of classes I should be taking and that kind of thing," Johnson, now 47, recalls.
"It was always ingrained that I was going to be a doctor or lawyer or that kind of thing. So I was ready for those answers, and the guidance counselor kind of looked me right in the eye and said 'What do you really want to do when you grow up?' and I said 'You know, I really want to be a race car driver' and my mom went 'Oh no. No.'"
But, despite his mother's objections, Johnson's destiny was settled.

Raised in St. Louis, Mo., Johnson attended college at the University of Illinois. He graduated in 1984 with a degree in engineering and promptly took a job with Chrysler, where he has remained ever since.
However, he's no suit-and-tie, cubicle-and-computer sort of guy. Car-and-track and speed-and-adrenaline are more his thing.
In 1989, Chrysler sent Johnson to an advanced driving class, which was taught in racecars. "I kind of caught the bug during that class," he admits.
Then, his boyhood dream became a reality. Johnson began racing at a sports car track in Waterford Hills, and was part of Chrysler's racing program with Neon cars in the mid '90s after working in their vehicle development department.
Building and racing he Neon series, Johnson said, was a blast. "They were really affordable and it was a nice car for racing," he says. "We sold so many Neons as race cars. It was really a popular car and we had a great time with the program."
Johnson's days of racing for Chrysler are over, but his involvement with building racecars is not. Now, he builds them for sale to racing teams or individuals. "We build racecars that are ready to go. Like, you could just write a check and then go on the racetrack with it," Johnson explains. "That's really unusual. There aren't too many companies that can do that. This program will – because what we had was people buying regular vipers and then spending a lot of effort and money to make them into racecars. So there was a market out there for somebody to just go buy a viper that's already set up to race."
The group has built only 124 cars since 2004, focusing mainly on Vipers. Most of the cars are sold to European amateur racers, though people as far away as Australia and Brazil now own the unique racecars.
The cost? Oh, just a measly $150,000. Though some, Johnson adds, can cost up to $235,000 with custom work and paint jobs.
As such, the owners are mostly wealthy businessmen with a penchant for amateur road racing. "Typically, (Aston Martins and Lamborghinis) are even more money, so we're kind the 'deal,'" Johnson explains. "With the dollar pretty weak right now, the car comes off as a great deal, especially overseas in Europe."
Johnson and his team also support drivers on the tracks, and fix the cars that are crashed. "A lot of times teams will send the cars back to us to really make it dead-on repair that you'll never know it was ever in a crash," he says.

When most Americans conjure up images of racing, their imaginary pictures look something like a scene from "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." There are beer-guzzling rednecks, scantily clad, bleach-blonde women, Southern accents and lots of homophobia.
So how did a gay man find his life calling in such a stereotypically anti-gay sport?
The sports car racing that Johnson has spent his life working with is a far cry from the NASCAR racing many Americans worship.
First, he says, sports car racing is done on a closed street circuit. Locally, that means racing on Belle Isle or Waterford's tracks – though it used to take place in downtown Detroit.
Also, Johnson points out, sports car racing isn't done on a traditional smooth oval track. Instead, it includes many turns, hills and other fun obstacles.
Lastly, sports car racing is the NASCAR of Europe, meaning its slightly more refined and a lot less homophobic (think: "Talladega" gay race car driver Jean Girard, who spoils the perfectly hetero racing scene with his happy romps with his partner and incessant tea-drinking while driving 120 miles per hour.).
Though Johnson was married to a woman for a decade, he came out in 2003. Since then, he has come out to select supervisors and coworkers, and often brings his boyfriend – a GM engineer – to the racetrack.
Johnson, however, has never had a cup of tea while driving.
And though he hasn't lost his job or faced much discrimination from co-workers, Johnson admits that a lot of that may be due to the fact that he's not completely out. "We don't really talk about that kind of stuff. My staff and I don't really talk," he explains. "It's kind of a tough field to be in from that point of view in that it's not very – I know that nobody in all my years of being in the group in that field, I know nobody else who's out. I kind of keep it quiet and keep it my own personal thing."
To Johnson, just being able to be out to his friends and family is enough to keep him happy – even when faced with anti-gay remarks or jokes on the job. "I have heard a lot of anti-gay things at the track, but it's probably typical of any industry," he says. "But it hasn't affected me because I really haven't been out to most of the people on the track."
Still, Johnson hopes that if his coworkers did find out – say, by picking up this issue of Between The Lines – that they would be supportive and perhaps think twice before making another anti-gay remark. "Maybe it'll open their eyes a little bit to the fact that it's anybody you could be working with or seeing at the racetrack," he reasons. "You never really know. And that doesn't make me any different."
And Johnson can still race – with or without a cup of tea.

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