"PARKER JOHNSTONE: PHILOSOPHER,
ENGINEER, MUSICIAN, AND RACE DRIVER"

Published in the 1996 U. S. 500 Yearbook ©                                             

         He has one of those faces that invites the whole world in, like the screen door of a small-town general store. Permanently reddened by a lifetime outdoors, it is as unassuming as an open-faced sandwich, putting you at ease without really trying, part-guru, part-storyteller, part marionette, and maybe a hint of Bill Elliott.

         And when Parker Johnstone has something interesting to say, which he almost always does, regardless of subject, his wide ruddy face becomes as intense or animated as the subject calls for, with most thoughts firmly punctuated at the end with an effortless smile that sweeps up the corners of his mouth like a final flourish with a fountain pen.

         His words stream out, like schools of new fish released from a state hatchery, swimming leisurely but always with a strong current, always toward the place he wants them to go, even if they do occasionally dart off to pick up a stray fact or story here and there to buoy up the point he is making. You get the feeling there is very little he hasn't given serious thought to and, when he talks about it, very little he has overlooked in the process.

         Listening to Johnstone talk about driving race cars or developing new racing engines or his physical training regimen or classical music or running marathons or how he's intensely competitive -- with others, with himself -- his whole life or stunt driving, ranching, flying, the politics of Indy-car racing, finding "the zone" in a race car or his own personalized definition of religious faith, you sense the well-oiled wheels of his mind carefully crafting thoughts that wind through his words, like a race car through an endless series of fast chicanes.

         Throw in a generous dose of good humor among the careful analysis, free thinking and free wheeling and you end up with a curious and engaging mix of Stephen Hawking, Bobby Unser, Jerry Seinfeld and The Great Waldo Pepper. No, Indy-car racing has never quite seen the likes of Parker Johnstone before.

         "It's an engineering mind -- I just work that way," he acknowledges, almost apologetically, after doing a thorough job of dissecting the myth that, just because they have been winning most of the races early in the '96 season, the Reynard-Honda combinations are the dominant force on the current Indy-car scene.

         That he has the mind of an engineer -- and a degree in electrical engineering from Cal-Berkeley to prove it -- is evident from the minute he sits down on the small couch inside the Brix Comptech team's bus just to the south of the garage area at Michigan International Speedway. It is a day and a half before the U.S. 500, where Johnstone will start a disheartening 16th after being on the pole and leading 52 laps here just ten months ago.

         But he gained nearly eight miles per hour in practice today, so he is in a better position to relax and expound comfortably on any number of topics, his arms stretched across the top of the couch in both directions, a clear-plastic bottle of commercial spring water in one hand. He is wearing a white V-neck sweater over a bright-red knit shirt and tan slacks that almost match his mop of short-cropped reddish-brown hair. He starts with the good news.

         "Today we're back up to 232-plus," he says, with a half-smile, "so we're regaining some of the form that we had last year in the Marlboro 500. We had a lot of expectations for the first qualifying weekend and the bottom line is, when you have a team that doesn't have the ability to test and you try to do your homework during the course of the race weekend, it makes it extremely difficult.

         "The '95 car was significantly different enough from the '96 car that the information we had last year was only a reference point. We had a very difficult time during qualifying weekend. We had a problem at Nazareth that we could never find and solve, and we brought it here for the qualifying weekend.

         Johnstone explains that the lingering problems with engine management, aerodynamics and a small chassis gremlin kept the team from bringing the grape-purple, white and pinkish orange number 49 Motorola Reynard-Honda back up into the 230-mph range that first qualifying weekend two weeks back, although they did manage to reach 227 mph initially. But come qualifying morning, they were struggling down around 222 mph. "Which was just ridiculous," he notes, his hands flying upward off the back of the couch in a gesture of disbelief. "We'd never run that slow here at any time in anything we've ever been in."

         "I'll tell you, when these things are wrong, they're hopeless," he adds, matter-of-factly. "When they're right, they're a joy to drive.

         Johnstone finally qualified at 224.372, only good enough for the inside of the sixth of the three-abreast rows. But the gains from the morning practice rounds on this Friday brightened both his race prospects and his smile. "Right now we don't have a great car," he cautions, however, "not like last year. Last year, -- everybody points to the Honda horsepower, which was certainly a contributing factor for the speed, but we also had a perfect race car. You can have all the horsepower in the world, but, if the chassis isn't set up properly, it's all a waste of time.

         "I could pass high, middle, low, I could go anywhere I wanted to, so we haven't gained back what we had last year, but we've made some clearly significant strides to recapture at least some percentage of it. Now we're concentrating our efforts on getting ready for the race. It's a long race; a lot of things can happen."

         The bad news is that, even though the Brix Comptech team is now pretty much committed to a full season on the Indy-car circuit after only doing selected races amid development and testing work for Honda during the previous two seasons, it is still chasing the better-financed teams in the CART entourage. "The difficulty we have coming back to Michigan is that Chip Ganassi's tested here thoroughly twice," Johnstone notes, his smile running only at about half-boost. "They've designed an all-new rear suspension for the cars specifically for here, and you look at that type of commitment, that kind of engineering budget, that kind of testing background, and I think being able to get the pole from Jimmy Vassar on that given day would have been extremely difficult.

         "But I certainly think we should have been right on the front. I don't think there's any reason for us not to have been able to achieve that, except that we very much have a David and Goliath struggle going on, in that our team and our sponsors expect us to be at the front at all times, and we've only done a few days of testing since the car was delivered in late January."

         Johnstone pauses long enough to take a swig from his bottle of spring water before hitting the verbal throttle again in his comparison of his team's practical capabilities versus the bigger CART teams like Ganassi's, which put Vassar on the pole and Formula One expatriate Alex Zanardi in fourth starting spot for Sunday's 500-miler. "We have no wind-tunnel program. We have no engineering staff, other than Ed Nathman. You hear rumors of teams having test days of typically thirty, forty, fifty, sixty days a year. For us, it's three, four, five days for a year.

         "Trying to compete with the world's best drivers, the best engineers, the best teams for an entire year . . . , he says, letting the thought tail off without voicing the obvious frustration. "When we get to a track like Nazareth, there's no advice, there is no experience. There's no data bank of information for our team to draw on. So, even take a rookie, supposedly, like Greg Moore, who's raced three Indy Lights races at Nazareth prior to getting an Indy-car -- I'd never been to the track until the race weekend -- so it's a very different type of rookie experience for me than an Indy Lights competitor would have or someone like Zanardi would have stepping into an experienced team."

         But then Johnstone's entire Indy-car experience has been markedly different from everyone else's. For '94 and '95, he probably put in as many miles as anyone on the circuit, but often they were miles on a deserted race track, like Texas International Speedway, where they haven't held a race for years. doing grueling development work on the Honda racing engine to bring it up to the competitive level with the Ilmor-Mercedes and Ford-Cosworth engines.

         That meant, for example, that when Honda finally achieved some positive results at least year's Indianapolis 500 through Steve Horne's Tasman Racing team and drivers Scott Goodyear and Andre Ribiero, Johnstone could only stand aside and watch -- and, perhaps, silently take some person satisfaction. "I was watching Scott Goodyear qualify on the front row," he begins his year-old recollections, "watching Andre be the fastest rookie there, watching Scott, for all intents and purposes, win the race. Although one part of you is disappointed because you couldn't be there, there's a great deal of satisfaction is seeing someone take the work that you've done and get it through the goalposts, if you will.

         "And I think, for our team, we lived vicariously through Tasman Racing last year. When Andre won, we won, because that means our decisions and hard work were correct, and that was the payoff. That's difficult to do, but you have to also understand that you could sit at home and do nothing, or you could be a key link in the Honda development program that made it happen. So, to me, that's something that will always be very special.

         "Would I rather have been racing? Of course, but, at the same time, we contributed to that success. And that's one thing I'll always thank Steve Horne for, the fact that he has always been very open and very public about thanking us for making that happen."

         Despite any intrinsic reward for the driver who had first become associated with Honda development when he was asked to turn the new CRX into a racing machine back in 1985, Johnstone makes it clear that going through two seasons as part-time test driver and part-time race driver was not the way he would have liked to have burst onto the Indy-car scene.

         "No, not at all," the 35-year-old from Redmond, Oregon, says point-blank. "I can tell you from past experience that doing a partial schedule is the most difficult thing in the world to do. You have a great weekend, like we did at the Marlboro 500 last year, and then you're gone for a month and a half.

         "This whole series is about momentum, education, experience, on all levels -- the crew, the engineer, the driver -- and to pull away from that is extremely difficult. But our number one priority and job was to help develop the Honda Indy-car engine, and racing for us was, at least for me personally, more of a data-gathering expedition so that I could do on-track comparisons with the Ilmor engine and with the Cosworth engine and then direct my development toward how to be successful over those powerplants.

         "Our primary reason for existing last year was not to race, but was to test, and that was understood by all parties. I, as an engineer, understood exactly why it was happening. It was a very logical, pragmatic business approach to the job of winning races. As a driver, I was greatly disappointed because, number one and primarily, I am a race car driver, but I am also -- and I'm beginning to appreciate this as time goes by -- one of the very few people who can do the job in the time allowed and, therefore, that makes me very important for doing that kind of work.

         "So, there's a great satisfaction in A, being selected to do it, B, being able to do that job well, and then being able to see the results, even though it might be in the hands of someone else."

         But, while the mind of an engineer could come to grips with the situation, the heart of a racing driver, which Johnstone also clearly possesses, had trouble coping with his on-again, off-again induction into the Indy-car ranks. "The problem is that, with our introduction to Indy-car racing in 1994, we were in a year-old chassis, pretty much struggling with a brand-new team to Indy-car racing, doing development chores for Honda, very similar to what Toyota is doing right now," he explains. "I knew in 1994 that, given the opportunity to be in an experienced team with current equipment, I could have made an impact on Indy-car like Greg Moore is having this year."

         But Johnstone, who was used to winning poles and races and championships in series like IMSA's Camel Lights, where he and his Comptech Acura-Spice reigned virtually unchallenged from 1991 through 1993, was relegated to a role something akin to a racing guerrilla fighter -- show up unannounced at a race, fire a few rounds, then disappear into the bush for a while. That hardly made him either a household name or someone the Indy-car crowd could take very seriously.

         "It's amazing how the Indy-car community will allow you a certain amount of latitude, but only for a short amount of time," he says. "Pretty soon, we got labeled as a back-marker team."

         But taking the pole for Michigan's annual 500-miler in late summer last year changed that . . . sort of. "I think last year, with the pole at the Marlboro 500, it surprised everyone except us," he relates, with the ruddy-raced smile swinging wide open again, "because we knew we could do it. The funny thing was that, in the press conference after the pole, there were a number of people who said, 'Why do you deserve to be here?' and 'Who are you?' and 'Have you ever led a race before?'

         "And I went, 'Hold on, I've got the all-time professional road-racing record for consecutive poles, and I've done this, that and the other.' I think what surprised people even more was the fact that, not only did we qualify on the pole, we led handily and lapped everyone up to, I think, fifth or sixth place before the first pit stop, which I don't think anybody expected."

         But, as some cynic once said, no good deed goes unpunished, which Johnstone quickly learned after his stunning Michigan performance. "The unfortunate part of that is I also got branded as an oval-track expert when I'd never raced on an oval before in my life," he adds, his voice rising toward an astonished laugh. "They said, 'Well, you know, he's really an oval driver, not a road course driver.'

         "And that carried over to this year. Actually, in the first practice session at Surfers Paradise, I was fifth quickest, and the next quickest new guy was Greg Moore in 19th. So, all of a sudden, people say, 'Well, yeah, he's doing it on a street course, but, you know, Surfers goes to the left!'"

         Johnstone shakes his head in bewilderment at that, then takes time to pull off his sweater before draping his wiry arms, their fine hair bleached out by the sun, on the back of the couch again. He figures it wasn't until this year's Long Beach Grand Prix, where he qualified sixth and finished second, that the false label started to peel off.

         "When we got to Long Beach, I say, 'So now what's the excuse? It goes clockwise, guys!'" he says with some lingering relish.

         Of course, the press conference at Michigan in late July and subsequent encounters with Parker Johnstone demonstrated that he wasn't just another guy in a Nomex driving suit with PR-varnished generalities for answers. The media and general public alike found him uncommonly insightful, analytical, expansive, accessible, warm and witty. As we said, they had never quite seen the likes of him before.

         Who else had ever tried to explain what it feels like to be in racing's version of "the zone," that ethereal place where race drivers -- or at least Parker Johnstone -- enter an almost-spiritual realm on the very limits of land-speed? At Michigan, after winning the pole, he described it this way: "There is some place you go when you're on the edge like that. It is almost like you are driving from outside the car, looking at yourself and ahead at the whole track at the same time. The first time that ever happened to me, it did so on its own. But, now that I recognize it, I can call upon it when needed. I use it sparingly, out of fear of overusing it, but, when the car and all the components are just right, it is an absolutely incredible feeling."

         Pretty heady stuff when post-event interviews ordinarily revolve around handling nuances, tire staggers and mentioning all the sponsors' names in alphabetical order. But no one has yet accused Johnstone of being ordinary, and he remembers exactly when and where he found "the zone" in a race car for the first time.

         It was 1987, at Watkins Glen. He is also quick to caution, though, that, unlike other athletes, racing drivers can't "stay in the zone" all the time. "You would be an absolutely lousy test driver if you did that," he points out, "because you have to be very conscious, very aware of everything that's happening, being able to log the data and being able to retrieve the data, so that you can come in and give very specific information to your various engineers.

         "That's very, very different from being in the zone, when there is no information to relate. I use it for very specific things now. It took me a year or two to learn how to turn it off and on, but now it's pretty much like a light switch."

         The harsh realities of auto racing, he continues, make limited use of "the zone" necessary. "There is no other sport, with the exception of bull-riding or bullfighting, I think, where the consequence of a mistake is serious injury or death -- and the writing off of a million-dollar piece of equipment. Racing is much more like playing a chess game and, if you lose a piece, you end up in the hospital. And you do that for two and a half hours.

         "Plus, the entire time you're in a paint shaker where you're pulling three and a half G's, and, by the way, you're surrounded by 27 of your closest friends who all have the same goal. Just saying you're in the zone and 'Gee, that's nice' . . . but, when Michael Jordan pops out of the zone and misses a three-pointer, so what? There is no consequence to that, other than they lose a game, or his three-point percentage goes down a tenth of a point. The stakes are much higher in racing."

         Such enlightenment did not erase all the skepticism about Johnstone's arrival as a legitimate force on the Indy-car scene, however. "That pole position almost created more trouble than it was worth," he reports, with another flourish of a smile, "in that, all of a sudden, it's, 'Ha, you guys are on top of the world, so that's where you should be,' and, when we didn't repeat it at our next race, suddenly it became a fluke. It was like a 'one-race wonder' kind of thing.

         "It was the only Indy-car race we'd gone to, up until that point, where the car came off the trailer good and we'd made steady improvement and never got behind. Because, as competitive as the paddock is now, if you get behind in one session, whatever the reasons, and missed the setup, you're behind the entire weekend and you're 20th. That was the first weekend for me as an Indy-car driver where the car came off the trailer as a good car and we made it a very good car, and that's as simple as it was.

         "Every other race that we've competed in, until this year, we've always been behind almost a session or a full day. And you can't do that here; everyone's too well-prepared."

         That yo-yo effect last year -- and even in the first part of the '96 season -- became something of a sticking point within the Brix Comptech operation, according to Johnstone. Comptech Racing, for whom he had raced -- and usually won -- since 1987, and Brix Racing, which became associated with Comptech in 1993 and then came on full-force for the 1996 CART season after fielding winning entries in IMSA's GTS division, both had become accustomed to consistently running up front.

         "The problem with our team that we face on a daily basis is that we've been so successful in every form of racing we've been in," Johnstone starts to explain. "It's difficult for the team to understand that . . . well, it's like being sixth on the grid at Long Beach and our team owners saying, 'How come we didn't do better?' And you point them to Bobby Rahal, who's 20-something on the grid, and say, 'Go down and ask Bobby Rahal that question.'

         "At times, I don't think they grasp the enormity of the task we're trying to undertake. This is a really tough crowd, reeeaaaallly tough, and you don't just show up and have instant success here. The problem is we're almost doomed by our own success because, when we do well, then that expectation carries on to the next weekend, which may not be a realistic expectation. Finally, one of my owners did say, 'Well, this must be harder than we thought it was.'"

         The heart of the matter, Johnstone reckons, is the highly competitive nature of the CART circuit. "This is the only open-wheel series I'm aware of where, legitimately, sixteen, seventeen, maybe eighteen guys, on any given weekend, can qualify at the front and run there, which means, simultaneously, on any given weekend, they can be at the back," he notes.

         "That's what I try to convince my team owners, as soon as they start getting down. I say, 'Well, look, we were at Brazil, we qualified fifth, Michael's in 16th, Al Jr.'s there, and Emerson's there, and they have excellent teams and huge budgets. How do you think they feel?' I imagine completely perplexed because everyone in this series has come from a series of racing, in order to get here, where they qualified on the pole and won races on a regular basis.

         "You get a whole group of people with those kinds of expectations and you put them all in the same place at the same time, you're going to have a lot of disappointed people."

         The Brix Comptech team was among the disappointed in the early stages of the '96 season. Johnstone crashed in practice at the season opener in Homestead, Florida, suffered a concussion and missed both qualifying and the race. He qualified in the top ten at both Brazil and Australia, but failed to finish either race.

         Then came the breakthrough at Long Beach, where he finished second to Vassar, after leader Gil de Ferran slowed with mechanical problems late in the race. The animated Johnstone reacted more like the winner, hugging crew members like long-lost relatives and blowing kisses to the crowd from the post-race podium.

         Now, six weeks later, he reveals that beneath the natural joy he demonstrated was the practical reality that the runnerup finish may have helped keep the team on track for the remainder of the CART season. "I don't think we'd be here today without the result in Long Beach," he says, without blinking. "The reason for the emotion and the elation is simply because our team was in a desperate position for a result and I think the future of the team, although not openly questioned, was certainly internally questioned. That result helped solidify a number of things to get us through at least the mid-part of the year.

         "If you look at Long Beach, it was the beginning of the realization of the potential that's there. And it wasn't a gimme race. De Ferran fell out, but, other than that, Jimmy stayed there, Al stayed there, Paul stayed there. It's not like fifteen cars fell out and suddenly you were there. We finished there because we should've been there. And that's very different from 1994, where you circulate, driving as hard as you know how, hoping that there's enough attrition that you can finish in the points.

         "For us, that result was a release and a relief from a couple years of frustrating Indy-car experience."

         The Long Beach moral victory does not mean, however, that it will get any easier for Johnstone and the Brix Comptech effort the rest of the season. It was followed, after all, by a no-gain weekend at Nazareth, where Johnstone, new to the short oval, started 22nd and finished 20th. "No, it's still difficult," he says, "because I know that we have a lot of untapped. But, because of our sponsorship restraints, we're not realizing the potential that the team is capable of, and I find that frustrating day-in and day-out. It's almost like it's 1994 all over again, just in a better position, if you know what I mean.

         "It's something, at the beginning of the year, when everyone's unfamiliar with the cars, I think you can make up for a lot of. And, at some of the circuits, you can make up some of it, but, when you start getting to places where you have teams that have years of experience -- at Mid-Ohio, at Elkhart Lake, at Laguna Seca, Portland -- I think we're going to be out of our element. And I think that's going to be very difficult for the team to deal with."

         So, Johnstone has, as he frequently does, raised his own question to answer: Will the team persevere through the entire CART season? "There's one sure thing about racing: There's no such thing as a sure thing," he muses. "I think we will, but, you know, you can go to the end of the season in a number of different ways. You can hit Laguna at full stride, fully supported, or you can hit Laguna Seca using used gears and tires and uprights and knowing that it's over well before you've gotten there. There are several ways to go about racing, but I think we will complete the full year."

         Still, the '96 season has something of a silver lining for Johnstone, in that he can concentrate more on being a racing driver than a test driver. "My role this year has changed a little bit because our team is now independent of Honda's constraints, if you will, simply from the fact that we are now a race team and not existing solely to be a Honda test team," he confirms. "So, therefore, when we do our own team development work, the Honda part of the development is very much put on the back burner because we're working on different things and I don't have the time to do the analysis necessary to do my job properly in evaluating Honda products.

         "So, what they do is, if it's specifically a Honda test, then it's specifically a Honda test. Otherwise, the Honda is another component in the package, as opposed to being the primary component in the package for evaluation."

         "My relationship with Honda will always be special, simply because I've been there for so long," he hastens to add. "Does that entitle me to certain information or certain parts the other drivers don't have? Absolutely not. In fact, when there have been development parts at the race track, I'm the first person to say, 'Hey, if Jimmy's the quickest, he should get them, or, if Gil's the quickest, he should get them.'

         "I understand the Honda spirit and the Honda philosophy of supporting the person who has the greatest chance to win the race, and I'm certainly all for that."

         The Honda engine, of course, has been the talk of the early part of the '96 CART season, winning four of the first five races -- three by Vassar and one by Ribeiro. And Honda has powered Vassar and Adrian Fernandez to the first two spots on the U.S. 500 grid. But those who suggest that Honda is now the omnipotent, dominant engine on the Indy-car circuit will get a lengthy, well-considered rebuttal from the one driver-engineer who probably knows the Honda powerplant inside-out, Parker Johnstone.

         "I think, if you look at that on a very superficial level, if you look at race wins, that's true," he will tell you, after another long pull at the bottle of spring water. "But who qualified on the pole at Homestead? Paul Tracy. Who had the fastest race lap? Greg Moore. We can continue this conversation through all the races. The fact that Honda won is because Honda has an excellent engine. They are also backing a team that is completely prepared to dominate the series and Jimmy had some good breaks, and so did Andre at Brazil.

         "But, in any one of those given races -- Long Beach, Paul Tracy turned the fastest race lap. I mean, we can go through the entire race where Scott Pruett at Brazil was trading fastest laps with Greg Moore and Paul Tracy -- you've got a Cosworth and two Ilmors. You go to Nazareth -- Michael dominated at the end with a Cosworth. Paul dominated, Emmo dominated with an Ilmor. So, for someone to say Honda has been dominant, they're the engine to have, is a very superficial way to look at what has happened.

         "You have to understand that there are so many people capable of doing that on any given weekend. The big difference is, I think, from mid-summer of last year, Honda was in a position to dominate the last half of 1995. Problem is, they had a rookie driver who is very, very good in Andre Ribeiro, and the Tasman team, but he was also on a very steep learning curve. He did qualify on the pole and win New Hampshire. And we made off-and-on appearances, but you have to remember there is something to be said about sheer numbers in any war.

         "Look at de Ferran. De Ferran had Long Beach covered. He dominated the entire event, but, when he dropped out, Jimmy was there to pick it up. If Jimmy would have dropped out, I would have been there to pick it up. That couldn't have been said for last year, when, for many of the races, Andre was the only entrant. If he would have dropped out, there was no one there to pick up the Honda banner and move forward. So, this isn't a sudden surgence of Honda power in 1996. It's been there for a while.

         "All you have to do is watch the Homestead tape and watch Greg Moore draft up and pass Jimmy Vassar and then ask me about Honda horsepower and I get a little nervous about that, because the Ilmor engines, we know, are turning more revs than we are currently. And they have a slightly better packaging than the Honda engine does. There's no doubt Honda led the way, but the other two manufacturers are catching up -- well, I think Ilmor has reached parity, if not a little better at this point, and Cosworth is a little behind, but Honda is also spooling up for another go.

         "You have to remember, if you're trying to run a hundred-yard dash, you can't run a marathon at that pace. And the same thing can be said for manufacturers, for drivers, for engines -- you can't run at 110 percent 24 hours a day, so you see these efforts coming in waves. And I think the next Honda wave will be coming. What we're seeing is a result of the Ilmor wave right now, and they're regrouping for their next assault, if you will, because racing is war. And Cosworth is coming up, and Honda is behind them with their next approach.

         "It can't be a continuous progression because there's not enough money, manpower and research time, etc. So, I think right now it's the greatest parity in Indy-car racing of all time, if you discount Toyota at this point. If you look at Ilmor, Ford and Cosworth -- you can listen to the Cosworth guys moan and complain all they want to, but Pruett just turned a 232-mph lap today and was second quickest. Sorry, the argument doesn't hold.

         "If there's another Cosworth runner doing 224 and complaining about horsepower, then they've got some other problem. Look at Goodyear and Firestone and what's happening there. You look at Lola, Penske and Reynard, and you take all those permutations of chassis, engines and tires and you throw a blanket over the entire grid. I think that's unbelievable."

         Having applied his engineer's mind to that current misperception, and poured down a little more spring water, Johnstone can easily make the mental U-turn that takes him back to some of his personal biography, which basically begins not at a race track but in an orchestra pit and on a ski slope and in Boy Scout meetings and on gymnastic apparatus. "My family is a big opponent of television," he begins, "so, from the time I was very young, I had a job and various other activities. It wasn't school, out at 2:30, and then screw around for the rest of the day. I was very dedicated to whatever my pursuits were."

         As a teenager, his greatest dedication was to music, practicing the trumpet four to six hours every day. "I was very disciplined and very dedicated to music," he says. "At the same time, I was a gymnast, I raced in Junior Olympics in snow skiing, I was an Eagle Scout, and did a lot of other things as well."

         But it was music that seemed to be the path Johnstone's future would follow. He was principal trumpet in the Oakland Youth Symphony and the International Youth Orchestra, which performed in Europe. "I was very much determined to play with either the New York Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, San Francisco or Chicago symphonies, something in that range," he recalls. "I didn't want to end up in the Des Moines orchestra or something. I said this is where I want to be, the direction I want to go."

         But, despite scholarship offers from Julliard and two other top music schools, Johnstone's career goals hit a detour shortly after returning from a symphony tour in Europe. "When I came back, I ran across some other young musicians who had put in as much dedication and as much time as I had, and they were far better than I was," he explains. "And I realized that, even though I could pursue a music career, I was never going to reach the level that I wanted to reach.

         "Just because of genetics and whatever else, it was just out of my grasp. I could still play professionally; I could probably hold second or third chair in a major symphony, but I could never reach the heights I wanted to reach. And, at that point, I said, 'Fine,' and literally stopped, absolutely stopped.

         "It was years before I could go to a symphony again, years. It was just recently that my wife and I went to the Portland Symphony, conducted by Bobby McFarren, and for the first time in many years, I just sat back and absolutely enjoyed the concert and loved it, and walked out with absolutely no regrets, no sadness, no 'Oh, if I only . . . ' That's all gone."

         In the meantime, the teenaged Johnstone had begun to dabble in racing. "I got my driver's license on a Thursday and was racing on Saturday, when I turned sixteen," he remembers. "At that point, it wasn't like I was going to make a living at it. It was just something I enjoyed doing, a hobby for me."

         Working part-time as a computer programmer in Silicon Valley at the same time, he pursued a degree in electrical engineering at Cal-Berkeley. After graduation, he gave up his well-paying computer job to work as a driving instructor at the Bob Bondurant Driving School for $428 a month. "So, what ended up happening was my life took a huge turn," he relates, with another ready smile. "I slept on couches, ate macaroni one night and cheese the next. And, all of a sudden, I'm a race car driver."

         "That's why, with this current IRL-IndyCar split, I get really annoyed when I read about no opportunities for American drivers and they have to have buckets of money," he goes on, mentally negotiating an unexpected twist in the road. "I read a quote from Paul Tracy the other day that said, 'The people that are here have worked really hard to get here and have sacrificed.'

         "It's not like the new American thinking that everyone deserves an opportunity, whether they've worked for it or not. Whether it's Andre Ribeiro, who's worked his butt off to find the money to come here and he's very talented, and whether he's got sponsorship or not is immaterial, or guys whose last names are Unser and Andretti, who were given the opportunities and their talent kept them here -- and there are a couple of other Unsers and Andrettis who aren't here anymore.

         "You know, you look at what Scott Pruett's been through, Bryan Herta's been through, Jeff Krosnoff's been through, I've been through. There are a number of Americans who have sacrificed and long ago a normally functioning, intelligent human being would say, 'Enough, I'm going to pursue something of a normal lifestyle and make money doing this.' But they continued to sacrifice in order to make this succeed.

         "That's one of the qualities of an Indy-car driver in this paddock. It's one of the reasons people are here, because of that determination."

         Rather than heading on down that road to the IRL-CART dead-end -- he will get to that, to be sure -- Johnstone returns to his own early pathway through racing, winning the Renault Cup championship in '84, breaking in the Honda CRX in '85, racing Formula Atlantic and Formula Pacific before ascending rapidly to become king of Camel Lights for three seasons.

         He also gets to the juncture where he had to decide to make racing his career rather than a sideline. "From 1989 on, I was a professional race driver," he says. "I realized that I had to leave the final ties of security of getting a paycheck every two weeks and having a house that I knew I could pay the utilities and mortgage and commiting myself to being a professional race car driver, mentally and physically."

         So he gave up his job as general manager and chief instructor at the Bondurant school to go racing. He still helped run the family's ranch in Oregon for a while until he, wife Sharon and their two daughters decided to hit the racing road for good. "For the last four or five years, we've averaged 300 days on the road a year. That's pretty normal."

         "Yeah," he adds, a chuckle rising in his throat like fuel into a carburetor, "the glamorous like of an Indy-car driver, doing laundry on Monday mornings after a race."

         While Johnstone says he maintains that sort of commitment now in order "to solely focus on Indy-car racing and not be distracted by outside concerns," he doesn't spend his whole life in the cockpit of his Reynard-Honda. Far from it -- a typical day, he relates, begins with answering fan mail and then a few hours of physical training. But not just a few pushups and five minutes on a treadmill.

         No, Johnstone trains like a man who wants to compete in triathlons, run marathons and/or bicycle centuries, which, of course, he does. "I've trained for marathons, I've trained for centuries, I've trained for triathlons, because, first of all, it's good for my job. The fitter I am, the better I can do my job, and it also prepares me mentally, as well as physically.

         "I can't possibly compete with the world's best triathletes. That's not my goal, that someday I'll leave racing and be able to compete professionally, but I can tell you that, if I have the physical capabilities when I retire from racing, I will compete in triathlons on a very serious amateur level, simply because I love it.

         "I love to bike; I love to run. I have no natural talent other than genetic endurance. I can run marathons; I can bike centuries. My swimming is fairly miserable, only because I haven't put enough time into it. My wife is my coach, and she is an excellent swimmer."

         He also has found some time to do stunt driving in TV commercials and feature films. A member of the Screen Actors' Guild for more than a decade now, he was given a screen test for the hit film "Speed" a few years ago and was offered a speaking part as one of the passengers on the runaway bus. Because it would have conflicted with his racing schedule, he turned it down, much to the dismay of the film's director.

         "The director said, 'Maybe you don't understand, I'm offering you a part in a Hollywood feature-length film,'" Johnstone recalls, his inviting smile swining on its hinges once more. "And I said, 'Maybe you don't understand, I'm an Indy-car driver and I do this for fun because I really enjoy the film industry, and the people in the film business are just as maniacal and filled with lunacy as the people in the Indy-car paddock. It's a common insanity that you all share.'"

         Johnstone ended up doing a bit part as tow-truck driver and handling some of the stunt driving for the film, as he Indy-car schedule allowed.

         And, oh yes, he mans his own sailboat and flies his own acrobatic plane, too. "I fly simply for the joy of flying," he says of the latter. "I don't do it as a means to get from point A to point B, although I've used it for that. I do it because, if I want to bank 45 degrees to the left and climb a thousand feet and go over the top of a mountain and down into a valley, I can do it. I'm not being told what to do, when to do it, and my livelihood doesn't depend on it."

         All in all, it is a lifestyle package that suits Johnstone to a T. "I feel very blessed," he advises, "because I get paid to do the thing I love, and the other thing I love to do, which is train, is part of my job."

         And, unlike his earlier venture to the edge of the music profession, Johnstone's immersion into auto racing has never hit that same wall, so to speak. "What ended up happening is racing hasn't demonstrated to me yet that I can't achieve what I want to," he says, meeting the comparison head-on. "I haven't achieved it yet because I've been handicapped a little bit, but I think, given the right circumstances, I can still accomplish what I want to."

         He admits, too, that racing presents a paradox his earlier pursuits did not -- success and failure are harder to define and virtually impossible to predetermine. "You look at any stick-and-ball sport, or you look at music, where the only thing that is keeping you from displaying your talent is your instrument and yourself," he suggests. "Tennis -- a racket and a ball. Golf -- clubs and a course.

         "Racing -- there are so many coimplications and so many variables to the puzzle to make it all fit together properly to be successful that, yes, I may finish my career and never reach the potential I'm capable of. But I'm very fortunate that I have a wife who says, 'I don't want you to be 80 years old saying, 'If I only had . . . ' Therefore, internally, the red light has not come on for me to stop.

         "That could happen at any given time, either through accident, loss of opportunity, sponsor, whatever, and I'm fully aware that, because God's provided the opportunity in the first place, it could be taken away just as quickly. I understand that, and I'm appreciative of skill and talent and opportunity, but I haven't had the red flags like I did with music.

         "It hasn't been me saying, 'Oh, gee, I'm in marvel at how these guys can do that.' There's been no such thing."

         The only red flag he has encountered is this year's non-participation -- and that of his closest CART cohorts -- in the other race coming up on Sunday, the Indianapolis 500. He clearly has thought a lot about it, as he starts the preamble to his take on the whole IRL-versus-CART situation: "First of all, the Indy 500, to me, can't be denied its right as a piece of Americana, as a significant event. Even though I have horses, I'm not a great thoroughbred futurity race fan, but yet I've always wanted to go to the Kentucky Derby, to the Belmont. And Indy holds that same place in the hearts of Americans, and people outside the United States as well. That part can't be denied."

         Then Johnstone conducts his own self-interview, systematically counting off the pertinent questions and his often-blunt answers on his right hand, one long, slender finger at a time:

         "Did the Indy 500 make stars? Yes, it did.

         "Did the stars make the Indy 500? Yes, they did.

         "Have I waited my entire life to get to the Indy 500? Yes.

         "Have I missed it? Yes.

         "Does that bother me? Ehhhh, just a little bit, because any success you have is only measured against the people you've been successful over. You know, the Chicago Bulls playing Redmond High School in basketball wouldn't be considered a significant victory. The day you triumph over Scott Pruett and Al Unser Jr. and Bobby Rahal and the other greats of Indy-car racing means you've actually accomplished something, and that also cannot be underrated by any means.

         "Do I understand all the politics that went into this decision? No.

         "Do I think, at the end of the day, the fans lose? Yes.

         "Do I think the drivers who've waited their whole lives to get there have lost? Yes.

         "Do I support IndyCar in their decision to have the U.S. 500? Absolutely.

         "Do I understand that, under slightly different circumstances, I'd be sitting in the paddock in Indianapolis? Yes.

         "Do I have friends there? Yes.

         "Do I have respect for the engineers and the mechanics and the teams that are there? Yes, I do.

         "Will it lead to a dilution of talent? Sure, it will, just like any expansion teams do. The other way to look at it is that it gives Indy-car fans twice the opportunity to view racing.

         "Should Tony Stewart, at some point, be here? Of course, he should. Unfortunately, when you begin splitting series, you can't have all the people that should be there at the same time, and I think that's too bad.

         "Do I respect Johnny Capels and Jack Long and those guys? Absolutely. I've done a lot of testing at the Speedway and they treated us extremely well.

         "Did I have goosebumps the first time I ran my first laps there on a beautiful fall day? Absolutely. I was pinching myself.

         "Can the split be reconciled? Not with the differences in technical specifications. I've talked to most of the main drivers -- Michael Andretti, Paul Tracy, Robby Gordon, all the guys who have had some success at Indy -- and asked them, 'Do they miss it?' They miss the race itself.

         "Do they miss the grind of May? Absolutely not. Every time you drive a car on a superspeedway, you're playing Russian roulette. When you spend all month, driving every day, someone's bound to crash, someone's bound to get hurt.

         "Did they like the format at Indy? Absolutely not.

         "Do they prefer the format here at the U.S. 500? Absolutely. I tell you, if we would have spent all month running cars around the track, the chances of someone crashing and getting hurt or killed would have gone up exponentially. Al Unser Jr. told me last year, 'Only do laps you have to.' You just don't go out and run laps on a superspeedway just for the joy of running on a superspeedway.

         "Formula One is less dangerous, NASCAR is less dangerous. There's no other series that has the potential for danger that we've got, which, if you look at an all-oval series like IRL, you're just upping the odds of someone getting hurt, which is too bad because I have lots of friends there, and I hope that they have a safe Memorial Day, just like we do."

         Finally, the soul of Parker Johnstone is, like his other varied parts, distinctly his own. "My faith -- it's a great potion of my life," he volunteers, when asked what important aspect of his life has been left untouched so far. "A lot of people ask me about my attitude. I don't seem to get down; I get intense, but not really down.

         "Obviously, God has provided the opportunity for me to do this and has always taken care of me well, and I understand this is a very transient thing, which doesn't mean I'm not serious about it, but, at the same time, I realize that my influence and impact here are only because I'm here for some specific reason that may be beyond my comprehension and that there is life beyond motorsports, although that's a little incomprehensible for me right now."

         But don't expect to sit down in a church pew and find Indy-car's most independent-thinking driver sitting next to you. "I'm a devoted Christian who is very much against religion, when that involves the pomp and circumstance and ceremony, and takes into account a lot of the hypocrisy that unfortunately has always surrounded religion because of its power and politics over thousands of years.

         "It's very personal and very organized behind the Bible and the word of God, but not in the sense where you sing three hymns, you sit down, you stand up, read something from the Old Testament, sit down, stand up -- it's much beyond that.

         "I think the original intent was never to have that happen in the first place. That's just man's organization and attempt to make something into a ceremony that was never meant to be ceremonial in the first place, man's corruption of a really good idea."

         "It's like when we take a really good race car," he concludes, a new, open-faced smile punctuating his comment, "and slowly turn it into something terrible."

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 Copyright 1996 by Jerry Miller ©

 Photo courtesy of Brix Comptech Racing

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