HOF nominee wasn't that interested in being a driver

Tom Wolfe called him "The Last American Hero." Federal authorities put him behind bars for 11 months for running moonshine from his rural western North Carolina roots. Fellow drivers knew of his tremendous will to win, which resulted in 50 Cup victories, including the 1960 Daytona 500, a race in which he pioneered the art of superspeedway drafting. As a car owner for Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip, he was responsible for six NASCAR championships. Junior Johnson -- bootlegger, racer, owner, businessman -- is as amazing a character as there is in NASCAR's storied history. Starting in his early teens, Junior retired from the cockpit by the time he was 35.

Hall of Fame bio

Robert Glenn "Junior" Johnson is unique in NASCAR history, with tremendous success both as a driver and a car owner.

• Complete story

Q: How did you get your start in racing?

Johnson: When I was a young boy, 15 years old, they had a bootlegger's race at North Wilkesboro. The reason they had that, the cars they were running -- they were called Grand Nationals at the time -- they would come and qualify at 1 o'clock and start the race at 4, so they had two hours in there to find some entertainment for the fans. The fans would get restless in the grandstands and they were trying to figure out something to entertain them up to the time the race started.

Enoch Staley was the promoter of the race track and his whole family was in the bootlegging business, just sort of like my family was. His brother, Gwyn, was in it, like my brother was. They had all these moonshiners with these fast cars and they'd bring them in and let the moonshiners drive them, and they'd have a match race between all of them. Well, my brother was a moonshiner, hauled whiskey and made whiskey and all that stuff. I was used to driving real fast on all of the dirt roads around there. So he wanted to run his car in that race, and I lived about two miles from the race track. And I was planting corn for my dad down in the fields and he came and wanted me to drive his car in the race up there.

I told him, "Give me a chance to get my shoes and I'll go with you." So I went up to the house and got my shoes, and we went off to the track at North Wilkesboro. Of course, we didn't have seatbelts or nothing like that then. They tied us in the seat with a rope. They put us all out there and started us up. None of us really knew what racing was all about. We were just racing with each other. Gwyn Staley was leading the race and I was trying to pass him, got an opportunity to get underneath on him, and there was a slower car down there. He pulled down and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him, and he won the race and I ran second.

That's how I was introduced to the racing, to start with. And I just kept messing with it more as time went on, driving and running where I could as I got a little older. (Continued)