page_title: Leslie Johnson (racing driver)
section_title: Racing: sports cars
hierarchical_section_title: Leslie Johnson (racing driver) / Review of competition career / Racing: sports cars
caption_attribution_description: English: Scale model by Bizarre 1/43 (Art. BZR090) of the 1952 Nash-Healey lightweight purpose-built for the Le Mans 24-hour race. Driven by Leslie Johnson and Tommy Wisdom, it finished third.
context_page_description: Leslie George Johnson was a British racing driver who competed in rallies, hill climbs, sports car races and Grand Prix races.
context_section_description: Johnson's early races were with a BMW 328 and a Talbot-Lago T150C sports-racing car. Louis Chiron had driven the latter to victory in the 1937 Grand Prix de l'A.C.F. at Montlhéry. Johnson fitted extra fuel tanks in the tail and cockpit for long-distance racing.
  1946: 2nd overall and fastest lap, Brussels International Sports Car Race, Spa; BMW. The Motor reported his performance as that of "a budding Dick Seaman" and added: "Sommer and Louis Chiron danced with fiendish glee as Johnson took the esses in a single controlled slide. Chiron said he had the flair of Nuvolari. Sommer, inarticulate with emotion, kissed the poor chap."
  1948: Winner, Spa 24 Hours; prototype Aston Martin shared with St. John Horsfall. Aston Martin's first postwar victory.
  1949:
  3rd, Spa 24 Hours; Aston Martin DB2, partnered by Charles Brackenbury.
  Winner, Silverstone National Allcomers Race; Bentley 8 Litre owned by Forrest Lycett
  His name is closely associated with Jaguar, particularly the XK120 model. The extraordinary competition history of his white car, road-registered as JWK 651, made it the world's most valuable XK120 when it sold at auction for £230,000 ($350,000) in 2001.
  His various successes with XK120s included the model's first-ever victories in Europe and the United States:
  1949: Winner, Daily Express International Sports Car Race, Silverstone, the XK120's first race, after an early collision with a spinning Jowett Javelin dropped Johnson to fifth.
  1950: Winner in class, 4th overall, Palm Beach Shores, Florida, SCCA sports car race – the XK120s first American race – despite losing the brakes. Johnson was granted an American racing licence for the event, as his entry was not sanctioned by the RAC, and the Jaguar was unmodified from standard specification. Jim McCraw wrote, "In rain and high winds, the Jaguar finished fourth in a race that included three giants of American sports-car racing – Briggs Cunningham in a Cadillac-Healey, second; Phil Walters in a Healey, fifth; and Miles Collier in a Riley-Ford, sixth. Sam Collier finished eighth in one of the XK 120s, and Bill Spear DNF'd with no brakes in the third car." The success launched Jaguar in the US market.
  Johnson's Le Mans results: 
  1949: DNF, Aston Martin DB2, co-driver Charles Brackenbury. Retired from fifth place after six laps; overheating caused by water pump failure.
  1950: DNF, Jaguar XK120; clutch failure after 21 hours while lying third and catching the leader at a rate that would have seen the Jaguar in the lead before the full 24 hours had elapsed—an effort that convinced William Lyons it was worth investing in success at Le Mans. Explaining the clutch failure, Jim McCraw wrote: "Leslie Johnson ran as high as second during the middle portion of the race, but, in order to save brake wear, he kept downshifting the transmission at high speeds and eventually blew the clutch, which prompted the substitution of a solid-disc clutch plate from then on."
  1951: DNF, Jaguar C-Type, co-driver Clemente Biondetti. Retired from third place after 50 laps; no oil pressure.
  1952: 3rd overall out of 57 starters, behind two factory-entered Mercedes-Benz W194 300SLs; first in class, ahead of triple Le Mans winner Luigi Chinetti's Ferrari; second in Index of Performance; winner, Gold Challenge Cup.  Nash-Healey (a lightweight competition version hastily constructed for the race—the body was fabricated in less than a week; the entire car built from scratch in a fortnight).
  1953: 11th out of 60 starters; Nash-Healey.
  His Mille Miglia results:
  1950: 5th, Jaguar XK120. The best-ever result by an Englishman driving a British car, in this instance a  production model beaten only by lightweight competition cars entered by Alfa Romeo (Fangio's came third) and Ferrari.
  1951: DNF, Ferrari-Jaguar "Biondetti Special" shared with his 1951 Le Mans partner and four-time Mille Miglia winner Clemente Biondetti.
  1952: 7th to Bracco's winning works team Ferrari, the works Mercedes-Benz 300SLs of Kling and Caracciola, and three works Lancias. Lightweight competition Nash-Healey, with Daily Telegraph motoring co
caption: Scale model by Bizarre 1/43 (Art. BZR090) of the 1952 Nash-Healey lightweight purpose-built for the Le Mans 24-hour race. Driven by Leslie Johnson and Tommy Wisdom, it finished third.
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