By the time Johnson retired from Pro-level racing in his prime as a 26-year-old in 1991, he’d amassed seven AMA national championships and taken over the mantel of the sport’s winningest Supercross rider.
It was a relationship that spawned multiple national titles across the 250cc and 500cc classes, including the famed back-to-back Outdoor and Supercross crowns in 1986.
Managing Johnson’s career on the Factory HRC Honda team was former five-time world champion, the great Roger DeCoster. It was an epoch like no other in history, a time when the AMA production rule had barely come into effect and when factory teams had astronomical budgets a time when privateers racing relatively standard equipment stood little chance of winning. In 1986, at the tender age of 22, Ricky Johnson was a hired Pro on a factory team, racing a bike that was way ahead of its time, earning $100K bonuses and living the American motocross dream. In the late 1980s, his factory HRC Honda RC250 was just as famous, and with good reason! This article originally appeared in Transmoto’s 2012 July Issue (#21). Ricky Johnson is one of America’s all-time motocross legends.
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