Tube Mills. After briefly investigating running a Mazda RX-7, Johnson came to the fore when a change in regulations introduced the Ford XD Falcon to the series. Johnson debuted his new Falcon at a non-championship meeting at Lakeside in June, and then finished second in the car in the 1980 CRC 300 at Amaroo Park in August. Johnson served notice of his and the XD's arrival to a delighted Peter Brock when he led the Holden Dealer Team VB Commodore early in the race and it was only tyre troubles that dropped him to second behind the Commodore. Brock was delighted as other than Kevin Bartlett's 5.7L Chevrolet Camaro Z28 (which had proved its speed, but its drum rear brakes were not up to the job), his HDT Commodore had proven near unbeatable in 1980 and Johnson and the new model Ford Falcon provided a welcome new challenger. The largely unheralded Johnson then surprised everyone when he qualified on the front row for the 1980 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 alongside Bartlett's Camaro and in front of Brock (who had qualified on pole for all 12 races touring car races he had entered to that point of the year). Bartlett had been the fastest in official qualifying, but Dick matched his time by the 1/100th of a second. When the flag dropped to start the race, the Camaro bogged down and Johnson took off, quickly building a large lead over the first sixteen laps of the race, including putting a lap on four time and reigning Bathurst champion Brock after the Dealer Team Commodore had to pit for minor repairs. On the seventeenth lap after just having lapped Brock, Johnson collided with the wall coming out of The Cutting after running over a large rock in the road. Coming out of The Cutting (in the days before the use of the Safety car), Johnson found a tilt-tray tow truck that was retrieving a mechanically failed car from the circuit on one side of the road and a basketball sized rock sitting right on the only path past the truck. The Falcon ran over the rock with its left wheels and caused Johnson to impact the wall which was enough to all but destroy the car. In the aftermath of the crash, as Johnson was standing beside the car as it lay across the track (partially blocking it and leaving only one line through),