A sketchy character

Since the '60s John ‘Stonie’ Stoneham has been spicing the nation’s car magazines with his quirky and irreverent take on motoring and motor racing.
The prolific motorsport cartoonist’s signature – and his distinctive drawing style and humour – is as identifiable to long-time fans as the famous characters he portrays.
Stonie is quite simply one of local racing’s living treasures and part of the sport’s fabric.
It all started way back in mid-1968 when the titillating Pix magazine published a one-off drawing (below) of a club scene.
Later that year came his first contribution to a racing magazine, the September 1968 issue of SA Motor Sport. The accompanying caption read: “The cartoon is the first in a series being sketched by 21-year-old Adelaide man, John Stoneham, secretary of the Morris 850 Car Club of SA. John, of Ballater Avenue, Campbelltown, has been doing cartoons since he was 11, starting out as cartoonist for his local scout group and at school. We hope you like his work.”
Like his work?!

Stonie's first contribution to the racing landscape.

It’s fair to say readers – but not always drivers, team bosses or officials – have gobbled up Stonie’s cheeky and irreverent ‘scribblings’ ever since. Like all good cartoonists, his style is to push the envelope, take the piss, make a statement and, of course, find the funny side of what’s topical. Above all else, it’s to entertain.
As Aussie racing legend, the late Frank Gardner once said, Stonie’s sense of humour “makes him one of Australian motorsport’s most valuable assets.”
Stonie pinches himself about the privileged position he’s held for the last five decades.
“It still blows me away that I’m still doing it. I was one of the blokes who stood on the hill, tinnie in my hand, watching motor racing. It’s just that I’ve been lucky enough to be able to make comments for all these years! But I’m amazed that some young bloke hasn’t come along and taken my job!”

But then, no young bloke has shown the same flair for depicting the sport in a way that neither words, still photos nor TV footage can match. Like drawing former V8 Supercars chief Tony Cochrane as a Roman emperor or a thick-eyebrowed Craig Lowndes as the work experience boy.
“If you are doing cartoons on any subject, you have to be a little bit bent; you have to think outside the square. Often I’ll do a cartoon where there are no cars in it, and I portray the drivers as warriors, soldiers, school kids or something else. What you are trying to do is humanise them. When a driver like Russell Ingall said something like, ‘it was such a good lap I had a chubby’ you had to go with that,” Stonie enthuses. “That’s Russell. That’s his sense of humour.”