This article first appeared in the March, 2016 edition of SportsCar Magazine. SCCA members can read the current and past editions of SportCar digitally here after logging into their account; To become an SCCA member and get SportsCar mailed to your home address monthly in addition to the digital editions, click here.

Through 50 years of sweat and tears, SCCA National Champion and pro racer John Morton would have it no other way

John Morton may be the most underappreciated racer in the history of SCCA. Over his half-century of active racing, he has moved from SCCA Club Racing to the top of the professional ranks and back again – several times. Through it all, Morton has maintained the true spirit of the enthusiast driver; the realization that whether you’re driving at Le Mans or at a Regional race, it’s all about the cars and the competition.

Morton started driving in 1963, in the heart of the first golden age of sports car racing. Originally from Waukegan, Ill., Morton had been attending Clemson University in South Carolina. After driving a few local jalopy races down south, Morton decided to drop out of college, at age 21, to pursue his dream.

“I had written a couple of letters to driving schools in England, but I didn’t get any positive responses,” Morton recalls. “The Cooper school was out of business and the Russell school didn’t answer. I had seen an article in Road & Track about Carroll Shelby’s school in Riverside, Calif., so I wrote a letter to them. They gave me a date for the school and I drove to California.”

That decision, combined with some moxie, shaped the rest of Morton’s life. “While I was there in the school, Peter Brock was my instructor. During the week, Shelby came out to test the first Cobra racecar. I asked Peter if he would introduce me to Shelby, and he did. I built up my nerve and I asked him for a job. If he had said no, I was just going to turn around and go back to Illinois. But he said to come see him on the following Monday.”

Shelby took the aspiring young racer into the business, and gave him his first job. “Shelby took me downstairs and showed me where the janitorial stuff was,” Morton relates with good humor. “That was OK; I didn’t expect to be a racing mechanic right away because I really wasn’t qualified to be one. I was a janitor for a while and the parts chaser for a while, and I picked up some skills in the shop.”

Over the course of the following year, Morton learned the basics of building and setting up racecars. He graduated to fabricating parts for both racing and street Cobras, and the job earned him enough money to buy his own racecar.

“I bought a Lotus Super Seven – Shelby came out to a race to watch Ronnie Bucknum drive, and I almost beat him,” Morton says. “So his ex-janitor almost beat his driver in an SCCA Club race! Shelby put me on the list and I ended up getting to drive several races for the team.”

Morton drove a Cobra in three 1964 SCCA races with the Shelby American team, including Sebring, Road America, and Bridgehampton in the FIA Double 500. The team also entered Morton’s own car, now a Lotus 23, in several more races.

“We were second overall and won GT at Road America,” Morton recalls.
After his time with Shelby, Morton raced his Lotus 23 in SCCA Club races for several years. “It was moderately successful, but not what I hoped it would be,” Morton admits. “I didn’t have any money to run pro races. I ran some of the USRRC races, but I quickly ran out of money, so I went back to Club Racing.”

Morton was living in Los Angeles and making a living as a fabricator when the next important chapter opened up for him in 1969.

“Peter called me and wanted to hire me. One of his best employees had left and he needed another fabricator. He offered me the job, and I said I’d come if he would give me a chance to try out as the driver when the car was finished. He agreed, so one thing led to another. I did well with the car and became the number one driver for the team.”

Morton drove the second of two Datsun 2000 Roadsters for BRE in 1969. After qualifying in first and second place in D Production at the Daytona Runoffs, both BRE Roadsters suffered fuel starvation failures while leading the race.

“The next year we went to the Z-car, which was very successful eventually, but for the first few races it was kind of a disaster,” Morton admits. “We eventually got it going, and won the 1970 and 1971 National Championships with it at the Runoffs.”

BRE was also involved in SCCA Pro Racing’s Trans Am 2.5 Challenge series, and Morton won the championship in 1971 and 1972 driving a BRE Datsun 510. Those were the final years for the small-displacement Trans Am series, and when the series ended, Brock dissolved his team.

With the end of the Trans Am 2.5 Challenge, Morton again found himself looking for a place to land. However, the next three decades would keep him busier than ever.

“I languished for a while,” he remembers. “I’ve never been good at directing my own future. I had a tryout in IndyCar with Vince Granatelli, but the day I called Granatelli they had just lost the STP deal, so that went nowhere.”

In the mid-1970s, Formula 5000 looked like a promising series. “In 1974, I started running some Formula 5000, but it was very hit and miss. I didn’t seem to be able to put anything together,” Morton admits. “I was known as a small sedan driver, but I wanted to race in a professional series. I bought a Formula 5000 car, and then the series turned into the Can-Am, so I bought a body for the car and I ran that for a while.”

In addition to driving in Formula 5000 and Can-Am, Morton also raced in the IMSA BFGoodrich Radial Sedan series and worked on developing the new Frissbee Can-Am cars. Based on underpinnings by Lola, the Frissbee cars won the Can-Am championships in 1982, ’83, ’85, and ’86.

“Frissbee was a real low-budget thing I did with Joe Cavalleri and Brad Frisselle. We put together the car, and Trevor Harris was involved in designing it. It was an incredibly good car! A simple car, but very successful.”

As a driver, Morton partnered with Philip Conte as a sponsor for the 1981-’82 Can-Am seasons, and then went to work as a driver for Conte’s IMSA GTP team for two years, before changing gears again.

“In 1985, I was hired by Jim Busby to drive for BFGoodrich in a Porsche 962,” he recalls. “I drove for him for two years and then I drove for Bob Tullius in the Group 44 Jaguars in 1987, and also the Nissan GTP cars in 1987 and 1988, then the GTO cars starting in 1989 through the mid-90s.”

In addition to all the rest, Morton found time to get six starts in the CART series, an overall win at the 12 Hours of Sebring, and he raced nine times at Le Mans. Morton claimed a C2 class win at the 1983 24 hours of Le Mans, and a GTS class win in 1994 driving a Nissan 300ZX Turbo.

Morton found his way back to the Runoffs in 2013 for the 50th event, driving a Nissan 240Z in E Production. “The SCCA that year said anyone who had ever won a championship could race again – so they allowed these old men to run,” Morton jokes.

Morton finished his race in 10th place. As a veteran racer, he’d have liked to do better, but he recognizes the quality of the competition.

“There are some really good drivers out there in SCCA today. It’s like a professional series,” he says.

Over the last 10 years, Morton has tapered off his serious racing, but has not retired by any means.

“At my age, I race because I enjoy it. I’m not too concerned because I don’t feel like I have to prove anything any more. I drive almost every year at Monterey, in probably the most spectacular cars I’ve ever gotten to drive. And I’ve been running some ChumpCar races just for fun. It’s gone from a profession to a hobby.”

In addition to his racing, Morton enjoys time in his airplane, and he’s gone back to his roots, buying a Lotus Super Seven to fix up and drive. As he reflects on his career, though, he believes he had it easier than aspiring drivers do today.

“Racing has changed so much since I started, and it’s interesting to have lived through all that. I was pretty good, with a lot of dedication, but I wasn’t overly burdened with talent. If I started racing at 21 today, there’s no way I would get anywhere,” he muses.

In the end, though, for John Morton it’s still about following his dream. “People ask why I chose such a crazy profession, and I say it was because I didn’t want to work for a living.”

Words by Jeff ZurschmeideImages by Sean Rice