Johnson praises Pye's performance

Prior to the last V8 Supercars event, team boss and racing great Dick Johnson was positive about the progress of his two new-for-2014 charges Scott Pye and David Wall.

While neither have cracked the podium yet, young gun Pye rewarded that faith, recording a fourth place finish in the big points Sunday 200km race. The result was Pye's best finish in V8 Supercars since debuting at the start of last year.

With the team heading to Sydney Motorsport Park this weekend, which has been a happy hunting ground in the past, Johnson sees no reason why his Wilson Security-backed team can't continue to power forward.

"Scott did a really good job at QR and just shows you that we do have speed in our cars - it's just a matter of the guys being able to get their heads around it so we can get the most out of them," Johnson told v8supercars.com.au.

"The cars are good enough to win races - and me personally, that's all I'm there for, to win races."

Will Davison recorded his first round win with DJR back in 2008 at the circuit, and Johnson said Max Wilson also had his best result with the team there, going back further - could we see a first-time podium for Pye or Wall this weekend?

"We're pretty confident the cars will be good enough to be up the front," the great said.

One of the exciting features of the weekend's Sydney Motorsport Park 400 is the array of support categories.

The ever-popular Touring Car Masters are on the bill - and it will be the only meeting the category stages in Sydney this season.

Ahead of the racing, Johnson and his old mate John Bowe - who currently leads the Touring Car Masters - will stage an evening with fans, giving them the opportunity to ask any question under the sun.

"JB's a real technocrat and we're to totally different people personality-wise in every possible way, where I'm the optimist and he's the pessimist! Somewhere along the middle there, we have a situation where we come up with an answer, which nine times out of 10 is pretty right... We'll talk about our life together in the years we spent as teammates.

"Very interesting stories always come out in these things and we take the mickey out of one another in some way because over all those years we've had a really good relationship."

Johnson was pleased the Touring Car Masters would be running with the V8 Supercars at Sydney Motorsport Park, keeping the fans in touch with the past greats of the sport.

"Obviously JB has been running in the Touring Car Masters for some time now and as you can see by the results, he does extremely well. So he certainly hasn't lost any of the ability he's had over many, many years.

"Actually - he's probably getting faster, to be quite honest!"

Interestingly, Bowe holds the TCM class lap record on all three variants of the Sydney Motorsport Park circuit layout, so he is probably not a bad person to stop by the DJR garage and give Wall and Pye some advice before the round.

"One would hope!" Johnson laughed.

Head to the Sydney Motorsport Park 400 from August 22 to 24 to see both Johnson's V8 Supercars, and Bowe in the TCM category, in action.

And for those looking to learn more about the old teammates,visit sinclairford.com.au/LegendsTour.html.