Photo: Pete Lyons
One of the best American sports car racers of the “Fabulous Fifties” is gone. Sherwood Johnston was probably best known as a driver for Briggs Cunningham at Le Mans, where he codrove to third place in 1954, but he also was a winner in a wide variety of cars in events all across the US.
Though born in New York City on September 29, 1927, Sherwood was raised in Mexico on his grandfather’s sugarcane ranch. That’s where he began driving — at the age of eight. However, the racing bug didn’t bite until Johnston was out of the Air Force at 24 and getting to classes at MIT in a Jaguar XK 120. Egged on by SCCA members among his frat brothers, in 1951 he started running the Jag in hill climbs and sports car races around New England. Success came so fast — a win first time out at Thompson, Connecticut — that the young man dropped out of college to launch nothing less than a blitz of North American road courses. Before that first season was out, he’d notched another victory at Palm Springs, and 1952 brought triumphs at Golden Gate Park, Bridgehampton, and New Hampshire’s venerable Mt. Washington Hill Climb, where he set a record.
Johnston was in a position to own his own racecars, notably a 4.5 Ferrari as well as two lightweight Jaguar specials, and he also was often invited to handle other potent machines. But it was as a member of the Briggs Cunningham equipe that he drove to international prominence. Partnered with Bill Spear, Sherwood scored Cunningham’s fine third overall at Le Mans in 1954. Named Cunningham’s lead driver for US racing, he scored several victories across this country with D-type Jaguars before a 1956 crash at Elkhart Lake helped him make the decision to quit at the end of that season.
He did make a comeback in 1969 and 1970 in F5000 open-wheelers, but finally retired again — albeit to race powerboats. Those, a wide variety of personal aircraft, and several business ventures kept his enthusiasm up despite the onset of diabetes, which cost a leg a few years ago. Death came on November 7.
“Sherwood was a good soldier,” says John Fitch, Johnston’s teammate at Cunningham. “He always fought hard.”
Submitted by Pete Lyons
