Subscibe to our feedEven Heroes Have Heroes
When it comes to racing heroes, Jimmie Johnson has had his share to admire through the years. But Johnson bestowed the greatest honor of all on Ivan Stewart when he was in seventh grade. Johnson brought Stewart to school with him. Or at least Johnson brought a cardboard cutout of the legendary off-road racer.
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“I did a book report on him in seventh grade. I brought in the cardboard cutout with me,” Johnson said. “I think it was one of my few B’s that year.”
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Now a three-time defending champion driver in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series, Johnson has not forgotten his roots even as he regularly wheels his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet to Victory Lane. Guys like Stewart helped Johnson’s racing roots take hold and grow where little else could – in the sand and scrub-brush of off-road race courses in the modern-day Wild, Wild West.
Stewart, who retired as a driver in 2000 after registering a total of 82 off-road race victories, remembers Johnson as a kid, hanging around the off-road scene and eventually enjoying some success as an off-road racer himself.
“We lived in the same town – El Cajon, Calif. – so I always remember Jimmie and his Mom and Dad,” Stewart said. “They were like the all-American family. They just loved racing. Jimmie always had that competitive edge, even as a kid. He had heart and he had passion. And when he got behind the wheel, he just stood on the gas pedal.”
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Jimmie and his Dad, Gary, at the Santee Sand Pit in California.
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Even before he stood on a gas pedal in an off-road race car, and long before he stood on it in a stock car, Johnson competed in Motocross. That was where he first ran into Rick Johnson, who is not related but is at least the equivalent of a big brother when it comes to harboring the same kinds of qualities as a competitor.
“Getting started, Rick Johnson was a family friend and raced Motocross and was a hero of mine,” Johnson said. “He was who I aspired to be.”
The Johnsons trusted each other completely. Jimmie’s father, Gary, was Rick’s Motocross mechanic.
“I met Jimmie’s parents when I was 10. His Dad was my mechanic,” Rick Johnson said. “When Jimmie was born, I was the baby sitter, so I’ve always been like a big brother to him.”
Once Jimmie was old enough to start competing himself, naturally he often looked to Big Brother for advice.
“When Jimmie was around eight I went to watch him race 65ccs. He placed second and talked about this one jump he was having trouble with,” Rick said. “I told him to visualize the jump -- just to close his eyes and see himself going through it. I told him to watch me when he was coming to the jump and if I was cheering for him to go for it.
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“When Jimmie was around eight I went to watch him race 65ccs. He placed second and talked about this one jump he was having trouble with,” Rick said. “I told him to visualize the jump -- just to close his eyes and see himself going through it. I told him to watch me when he was coming to the jump and if I was cheering for him to go for it.
"Now his Dad was standing next to me and wasn't happy about me telling him to make that jump. But Jimmie cleared the jump perfectly. Then he landed and fell right over. I ran out to get him back on the bike and ask him what happened. He said he was scared to do it, so he had his eyes closed."
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Young Jimmie Johnson accepts his trophy from his hero Rick Johnson.
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“Now his Dad was standing next to me and wasn’t happy about me telling him to make that jump. But Jimmie cleared the jump perfectly. Then he landed and fell right over. I ran out to get him back on the bike and ask him what happened. He said he was scared to do it, so he had his eyes closed!”
Johnson chuckled at the memory, but added that he wasn’t all that surprised even then.
“That’s just Jimmie,” Rick said. “When he trusts you, he has faith in you. He doesn’t doubt what you tell him – he just does it.”
That same trust came into play later, after Jimmie had taken some time off racing to be, as he likes to say, “a normal kid.” That was when Rick Johnson had a hand in helping Jimmie make the transition to off-road racing.
“I was running in Chevy trucks in 1992, and they were looking for another off-road driver, so I recommended Jimmie. I became his mentor, and he took to it like a duck to water. No matter what I told him to do, he had faith in me and would just do it.”
It was around that time that Jimmie started emulating another driver in Stewart.
“Rick really brought me into the Chevy family. He’s still a hero of mine and a really close friend but as a kid growing up, as my focus shifted to off-road racing, it was Ivan Stewart,” Jimmie said. “So Rick Johnson was great -- but Ivan Stewart was the man.”
Stewart is floored by such flattery these days, especially coming from Johnson. When Stewart was inducted into the 2009 Breitbard Hall of Fame, Johnson delivered a speech in Stewart’s honor.
“It was pretty cool. He probably had me on a pedestal growing up -- as someone he wanted to race with and maybe beat,” Stewart said. “Now we look at him as someone who really made it.
He’s an inspiration for his accomplishments, his talent and his charity.”
As he grew older, gained more racing experience and eventually ventured into stock cars, Johnson discovered additional heroes.
“There was a guy named Jeff Gordon who got into stock car racing and made stock car racing exciting for someone like myself,” Johnson said. “Typically, you had to grow up in the south to drive stock cars and I thought, ‘Wow. That’s great. Maybe I can race stock cars someday.’
“But still my eyes were focused on West Coast-driven racing, which boiled down to IndyCars. So for a time I had my eyes on Rick Mears, Roger Mears, Robby Gordon, and guys going on that path. I had my eye on the Indy 500. Then when my opportunities came along to race on the asphalt and with GM, in closed-box stock cars, Jeff was still somebody I really looked up to – along with Bobby Labonte. There was something about Bobby Labonte that I truly enjoyed; I liked to watch him and how he carried himself.”
Looking back, Johnson remembered he had a fondness for at least one NASCAR driver even when he was a kid still racing Motocross.
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“Cale Yarborough was one that I looked up to a lot when I was young,” he said. “In fact, once when I was on my way to race motorcycles on the East Coast, we drove by a Hardee’s (which sponsored Yarborough’s car at the time). I didn’t realize it was a restaurant. I thought it was his race shop. We went in to get a burger and Cale wasn’t there. I was pretty bummed out.”
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And always, lurking in the back of Johnson’s mind as someone to emulate, was Ivan Stewart. Meanwhile, at some point, a little role reversal took place and Stewart, though older, began looking up to Johnson with something akin to mutual respect, or more.
“When he was a kid racing, I never expected to see him one day as the NASCAR champion. But I remember when that changed,” Stewart said. “For most veteran drivers, the last thing you want is for some young kid to win. They already have the genes, the talent, the equipment. The only thing they lack is confidence – and that’s your advantage.
“When a kid wins for the first time, now he has his confidence. I remember when Jimmie won at the Seattle Kingdome, I thought, ‘He’s going to give us a hard time from now on’. “
Despite the gain in confidence and a corresponding increase in success, Johnson maintained a level of humility that likewise impressed Stewart as Johnson progressed through the years.
“I also remember when he was racing in the Baja (1000) and wrecked out in the desert. He was just out there sitting on a rock, waiting for someone to come by,” Stewart said. “He was just a humble, grassroots racer. I think that attitude keeps him humble today. If he hadn’t made the right contacts, gotten the right opportunities, he could be out there in the middle of the desert again.”
Well, at this stage of his career and with his contacts at Lowe’s, he could build a big house in the middle of the desert now. It would be a nice place to put his cardboard cutout of Stewart, if he still has it.