1962 Sebring Racers
By today’s standards, solid-axle Corvettes are among the poorest riding, least comfortable, and most ill-handling cars imaginable. All the same, a handful of individuals with the skill and the courage to tame the wild beasts actually went racing with them, and in so doing managed to blaze a trail through the record books at tracks around the country and around the world.Delmo Johnson is one of those skillful and courageous souls who helped establish Corvette’s reputation as a world-class production road racer. He owned Johnson Chevrolet, the largest Chevy dealership in Texas, and began competing in Corvettes in 1959. In a harbiger of things to come, he won the first race he ever entered, the “Frostbite” at Ft. Worth, held January 1, 1959. He went on to win hundreds more races, as well as class honors at Sebring and SCCA divisional championships
As Corvette history buffs know, 1962 marked the debut of the 327 engine. Because the larger powerplant packed a lot more punch, the SCCA decided to move Corvettes up a notch into A-production. Older cars fitted with 283 engines continued to compete in B-production.
Always on the hunt for greater speed and greater thrills, Delmo decided to replace the ’61 he had been racing with a brand-new 1962 Chevy Corvette. Owing to his demonstrated skill behind the wheel and prior successes with Corvettes, Delmo had a close relationship with legendary chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov and enlisted his assistance with the new car.
“It was easy,” Delmo recalls. “I called Zora and said, ‘Build me a race car.’ The only other thing I said was to make it white.”
