Features

"I Gotta Be Me"
Rally driver Matt Johnson says this is who he is and what he does
By David Gee

"What the #*%&…slow down dude!"

Rally driver Matthew Johnson isn't talking to me, or his co-driver. He is instead mostly talking to himself as I try to interview him when he is hurtling down a steep, mountainous section of I-70 outside of Denver in his race hauler with his rally car behind him.

Of course I can't see how he's handling his rig, but at least on my end he is doing a pretty good coming up with quotes, beginning with a debrief about Sno*Drift.

"Oh man, I'll tell you what, Sno*Drift was probably the biggest character-building motorsports event I have ever been involved in," says Johnson in his native North Carolina and Georgia-infused accent. "It was just major frustrating."

Particularly given the fact he thought he was well prepared.

"I made every effort to have the perfect car at that event this year. I had the perfect tires, the perfect springs, the suspension we had was set up the way I wanted it, I thought we were ready to go."

But…

"On and off the throttle the front diff had a lot of lockup, and so the car did not want to turn. The first couple of stages I was like all right, the car's ok, and then when it got narrow and icy I was just struggling."

He finished out of the Top 10 and I figured he stayed on the road and was just slow. He laughed when I asked him that.

"No, no, I can't do that. No, I went off three times, in three different snowbanks. And all of them were retarded on my part. The first one was probably the worst. The left front of the car...I gotta be honest with ya, I am highly frustrated with this road I am looking at right now, I can't find where I am supposed to get back on #470, oh wait, here it is, okay, illegal U-turn, now we're good to go...so where was I?"

At this point in the conversation/interview I'm really starting to feel bad. Matt is  a busy guy and is doing his level best to be affable and animated and AVAILABLE, even as he hauls his truck and rally car around Denver. But I don't want to be the cause of anything crazy as Johnson tries to get his Subaru to the suspension doctor.

"The rally car is in the box trailer behind me and is on its way to the same mechanic who used to work on Scott Crouch's car for Flatiron. So I am going to be taking care of that differential problem I told you about."

Oh yeah, there's one more thing Matt has to do. Go have an MRI on his shoulder.

"I was screwing around with Travis Pastrana and the Nitro Circus (MTV, Sundays, 10pm ET/PT) crew out in Utah on some snowmobiles. I fell off the sled and crunched my shoulder. There was a good lesson to learn there though."

Okay, now he's displaying some common sense, or at least a stronger sense of self-preservation. I knew what was coming next. Don't try to one-up or even keep up with Travis Pastrana in the crazy stunt department and don't do things (other than rallying of course) that might get yourself injured. Ah, WRONG!

"If you're going to play around with Pastrana, at least wait until the cameras are rolling," joked Johnson. "I went off and ended my day before they had the cameras out so we don't even have any video of my ejection and crunch. By the way, Pastrana is no good on a snowmobile, but of course, that doesn't mean he won't try to backflip it!"

Speaking of flips and rolls and crashes and the like, Johnson said all those things are trying to get into his head as he heads into the rest of the season.

"The thing is I can't afford to crash right now. Not that I've never really been able to actually but things are tighter now than they ever have been. Last year I rolled the Open class RalliSpec Subaru in Oregon. Then I rolled a friend's rally car while giving some entertainment rides for Red Bull. And I had another little dust-up at another rally. I just need to let go and really trust I know what I'm doing. If I don't I might end up crashing again. And I'm simply not willing to crash right now."

There is one exception to the no-crash mandate though.

"A few months ago I bought a truck and painted it up orange and took it out to a pasture and rolled it about 12 times. I mean that's entertaining. I'm fine about crashing that kind of stuff. But in the Rally America series, I need to keep the equipment in good shape, I need the championship points and I need the contingency money from Subaru."

So how does the rest of the '09 Rally America championship season look to pan – or plan – out?

"I'm already going to X Games. My plan is to use most of the money that I have now to get ready for X Games and run the first part of this season. And then I plan to use the money I will hopefully earn at X Games to fund the rest of my season. I also want to be the first Super Production class champion."

That's a lot, but he says it's also not enough.

"Like everyone else, I also want to work my ass off to grow the sport and manage to get myself into a competitive Open class car. My dream is that in a few years there are 10 or so of us running Open class cars each with an equal chance to win any given rally. That would be amazing. I am making a long-term investment in the sport and I really don't see myself doing anything else. I don't build houses, I don't program computers or design websites. All I do is be me, drive fast and be a rally driver. So it has to work!"

© 3/02/09 Rally America and Subenet LLC