Former off-road star tuned out to be a pretty fair NASCAR driver, after all.
Before his seven NASCAR Cup Series championships—including an unprecedented five straight—there was the 1995 Baja 1,000.
Before those 36 poles and 83 Cup victories, there was the 1995 Baja 1,000. And before his hands-down, no-question, first-ballot, maybe-unanimous upcoming pick for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, there was the 1995 Baja 1,000.
It might seem a stretch, but Jimmie Johnson openly credits the iconic SCORE Baja International 1,000 with helping him become the stock car driver who won all those poles, victories, and championships. He might even mention it during his NASCAR Hall of Fame acceptance speech.
It goes something like this:
In 1995 Johnson was 19 and already making waves in West Coast-based stadium off-road and SCORE racing. Cocky perhaps to a fault, he had an attitude that even he later admitted was probably too much. That approach got him in trouble during the 1995 Baja 1,000, SCORE’s famous endurance race down Mexico’s treacherous Baja Peninsula. (The 1995 race was 1,000 miles from Tijuana to La Paz).
Jimmie Johnson came into NASCAR with just enough attitude.
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It was early morning and Johnson was struggling, hoping daylight would keep him awake. Instead, he dozed off and crashed his No. 82 Chevrolet truck in the mountains, flipping upside-down and tumbling out of sight to the bottom of a deep ravine. “I kept wondering how far we were going to fall and how hard and where we were going to land,” Johnson said during a TV interview several years ago. “I knew the possibility was there for a really bad situation. It’s a moment I hope to never go through again.”
Search and rescue teams needed more than 20 hours to find Johnson and his navigator, Tom Gieves. (They were shaken, but relatively intact). In retrospect, those hours might have been among the most important of his career. “During the time in that ravine I did a lot of soul-searching about how I raced,” he said. “I learned a lot about myself sitting out there in the desert. I was young and dumb and didn’t really care if I crashed. I made a lot of mistakes and crashed a bunch because I wasn’t afraid to stay on the gas all the time. I thought I needed that flash to get recognized.
“Maybe I fell into that (mindset) a little too much. I was crashing so much that my career was going in a bad direction. I was kind of known as a reckless driver, viewed as someone no owner would want in his equipment because the crew would have to always fix it.”
The Baja crash and subsequent off-season gave Johnson time to change his ways. “I spent three more years in the dirt and the desert, and I never got upside-down again,” he said. “In off-road terms or dirt in general, that’s a pretty big statement … three years without getting upside-down. Really, that time out on the Baja thinking about what had just happened and what could have happened changed a lot in the way I went back racing).”
Once he reined himself in Johnson wasted no time going up America’s motorsports ladder. He left off-road in 1998 to go stock car racing with the American Speed Association. Three years later he was in NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series with Chevrolet-based Herzog Motorsports. (More on that later). After watching Johnson in ASA and Xfinity cars, Jeff Gordon convinced owner Rick Hendrick to hire Johnson. In 2002, Hendrick teamed Johnson with Gordon and Terry Labonte in Cup, with Joe Nemechek and Jerry Nadeau splitting time in a fourth car.
Gordon’s assessment of the fellow Californian was spot-on. Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus won in their 13th start, a 250-lap, 500-miler in April of 2002 at California Speedway, not far from Johnson’s hometown of El Cajon. They won 82 more races between 2002 and 2017, including a 16-year winning streak and a 10-victory season in 2007. Their unprecedented five consecutive championships came in 2006-2010, and they won again in 2013 and 2016.
Jimmie Johnson, left, and crew chief Chad Knaus were the sport’s dynamic duo much of Johnson’s NASCAR career.
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Their first victory at Fontana came via late-race strategy. Johnson had qualified fourth and led three times for 48 of the first 235 laps. He got the lead again when Knaus called for gas-only during their last pit stop at lap 236. The quicker stop gave Johnson track position, an advantage he maintained the rest of the way. Kurt Busch finished second, followed by fellow veterans Ricky Rudd, Bill Elliott, and Mark Martin.
Afterward, just as he did almost always, Johnson said all the right things. “Heck yeah,” he said when asked whether he was surprised to win so quickly. “This is unbelievable. You always think you have the ability to be competitive, but you don’t know until the right situation presents itself and you can showcase your talents. My hat’s off to Chad Knaus. We’re in a similar situation of trying to prove ourselves and he’s doing an awesome job. That was a great call to take no tires and gain track position.”
The victory took some pressure off the Johnson/Knaus No. 48 Chevrolet team. “That’s when I knew I was going to be employed,” Johnson quipped afterward. “They said they’d be patient, that I had time (to develop), but in my heart I didn’t think that was the case. I knew I needed to win, so to leave there with a trophy means I’d have a job for a few years. I was pretty stoked about that.”
Jimmie Johnson celebrates in victory lane at Fontana in 2002.
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“A few years” turned into 20… but Johnson’s slow goodbye from NASCAR wasn’t pretty. The last of his 83 victories came at Dover in June of 2017, one of three victories that year. He ended his career on an 0-for-130 skid from mid-2017 through 2020. He had Knaus, Kevin Meendering, and Cliff Daniels atop his pit box at various times, but nothing seemed to click. (Daniels later became crew chief for 2021 Cup Series champion Kyle Larson).
Johnson left NASCAR after 2020 to race Hondas for Chip Ganassi in the NTT IndyCar Series. He struggled in his 12 street and road races, never finishing better than 17th. He’s committed to this year’s full 17-race IndyCar schedule, including the Indy 500 and four other oval races.
Between the famous Baja epiphany and Fontana was the memorable Xfinity crash at Watkins Glen International. Who can forget the moment in June of 2000 when Johnson went head-first at speed into the track’s Turn 1 Styrofoam and Armco barriers? He was driving for William Herzog when his brakes failed approaching the right-hander at the end of the long frontstretch.
With no good options, Johnson simply held on. His car went off the asphalt racing surface nearing Turn 1, bounced a few times through the grass, and skipped over the track. Next, he plowed through the gravel trap, went completely through two yard-thick squares of Styrofoam, then finally stopped against the Armco barrier.
Johnson didn’t always run the 48. Here, he pilots the No. 98 car during the 2000 NASCAR Xfinity season.
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Seconds later, he emerged from his No. 92 Chevrolet, shaken but unhurt. He climbed to the roof of his demolished car, turned to face back toward the pits and thrust both arms skyward, mimicking Rocky at the top of the Philadelphia Art Museum steps.
Unforgettable. Simply unforgettable.
“That was a pretty frightening day, one of the few times in a race car when I thought it might be over,” the future seven-time Cup champion admitted many years later. “When the brakes went right to the floor I started bouncing through the grass. I saw the wall ahead and thought it was a concrete wall. I was just blown away when I survived that crash uninjured. “
As for the “Rocky” pose…
“I think people in the grandstands down there probably didn’t think I was still (alive),” Johnson said. “They probably were thinking along the same lines I was at first, that I was gone. When I started out of the car and they saw I was still here, they were on their feet, standing and jumping up and down. I guess I got caught up in the emotion of the moment and let them know, ‘yeah, I’m still here.’ ”
As time would tell…. and how!
Jimmie Johnson leads a pack at Fontana on the way to his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in 2002.
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But Wait… There’s More
• With relatively similar results, Team Penske driver Ryan Newman edged Johnson for 2002 Rookie of the Year. Newman had two more poles, eight more top-5 finishes, and one more top-10. Johnson had two more victories and finished one points position better.
• Cup was one of the few Rookie of the Year honors Johnson never got. He won ROTY in three different SCORE off-road classes and was the ASA’s top rookie in 2000.
• Like all great drivers, Johnson was at his best on the tracks he enjoyed most: 11 victories at Dover, nine at Martinsville, eight at Charlotte, seven at Texas, six at Fontana, five at Atlanta, and four each at Phoenix, Indianapolis and Las Vegas.
• Interesting note: Gordon won the first Cup Series race contested at California Speedway in 1997; Johnson got his first Cup victory there five years later.
Keyword: How Jimmie Johnson's First NASCAR Cup Win in 2002 Was Rooted in Baja