Buddy Johnson

Buddy Johnson (born October 1967) is an American businessman and entrepreneur involved in professional auto racing. He is most famous for his ownership of Ranier Racing with MDM.

Biography
Johnson had experience in racing, from Walsh's open-wheel cars, but wanted to get involved with stock cars. The Raniers needed help with the business end of the sport. "We met in Charlotte and decided we'd come to Homestead last year and use it as a chance to roll out Tony [Stewart)," Johnson said. "And it felt good, so we kept going." Returning wasn't easy - the sport Harry Ranier left had changed dramatically, in marketing and technology.

"Back a few years ago, you had 10 cars capable of winning every week - now it's 30," Harry Ranier said. "Definitely, it's the toughest thing I've ever tried to do, to sit on the sidelines for 4-5 years and try to come back and be competitive again."

Like a baseball expansion team, Ranier-Walsh has developed slowly. The idea was to get Stewart, an open-wheel champion in three different classes of midgets, some cockpit time in stock cars on Winston Cup tracks. So, the team ran only at tracks where the Winston series competed.

"You look at Busch as kind of like Triple-A baseball," Johnson said. "What we've done here is very unique. ... Most of the [NASCAR) teams aren't going out and looking for talent that's twoor three-levels down now and building and working with them."

So, as Stewart, who also ran in the Indy Racing League and took the pole in the Indianapolis 500, was getting an education in stock cars, Porter tested the Busch car and ran in the Slim Jim All Pro series.

"I think we have the two best young drivers in America," Lorin Ranier said. A crash at the IRL Las Vegas race forced Stewart to miss Sunday's Jiffy Lube 300. That opened the seat to Porter, who was 14 when he jumped into his first late-model stock car at Anderson Speedway, and won.

"Once I won that first stock car race I said, 'Well, I guess I'll be running in this for a while,'" Porter said in a quiet, Southern drawl. He speaks much slower than he drives, and that's a good thing. "I raced bicycles, too. I've raced just about everything."