Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2005 | 8:54 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Long before Jimmie Johnson was winning NASCAR Nextel Cup races and being selected one of People magazine's "Sexiest Men in the Fast Lane," which he was in 2000 (he is no longer on the eligible part of that list, having married longtime girlfriend Chandra Janway on Saint-Barthelemy Island on Dec. 11), he was the youngest driver (15 years old) ever to compete in the Mickey Thompson Stadium Off-Road series.
The Mickey Thompson series was to auto racing what arena football is to the real kind, only easier on the ears, the roar of the engines notwithstanding. Idle football stadiums were converted into miniature off-road venues and vehicles specially designed for circumventing bumps and jumps in what used to be the Red Zone began bouncing all over the place and into each other.
It was all quite insane, and more often than not, the guy who kept the shiny side up, as C.W. McCall used to say in those C.B. radio songs, was declared the winner.
Somebody, perhaps Ivan "Ironman" Stewart, stadium racing's biggest star and one of the first drivers to have his very own video game, told me to look at the Mickey Thompson series as a distant cousin to real auto racing. I didn't quite get the analogy even though I've been to Kentucky, where they specialize in distant cousins. But stadium racing was still a lot of fun and used to fill Sam Boyd Stadium to capacity, a feat the UNLV football team hasn't mastered to this day.
It also produced not one but two pretty good NASCAR drivers, if you can call Robby Gordon that. Gordon was Stewart's teammate in one of the Toyota factory trucks and, as I recall, he wasn't very popular then, either. This might have been because his idea of a clean pass was hooking his front bumper to the truck in front and then turning it upside down, where it would flail like a turtle.
Johnson, on the other hand, became a fan favorite the old fashioned way -- by winning races. He won Mickey Thompson championships in 1992, '93 and '94, and normally, I would write something here about his success in stadium off-road racing serving as a springboard to Johnson's eventual NASCAR stardom.
Only it was seven years after his last stadium championship before Johnson made his Nextel Cup debut and, as noted, the only obvious correlation to his racing past and racing future was that both include motor oil. And Robby Gordon.
"It's more when you are in trouble when that background shows up and helps you because you can't drive these cars like (those trucks)," Johnson said after climbing out of the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet during Monday's NASCAR Preseason Thunder test session at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
"But when something does go wrong I seem to keep it off the wall more than most guys and at least gather it up. So I'd say that (having an off-road background) helps."
In addition to learning car control, racing in the stadium and across the desert sage also allowed Johnson, the Nextel Cup runner-up in each of the past two seasons, to make some friends in high places, or at least fast ones. His stadium championships came behind the wheel of an S-10 truck. Last year, his series high eight Nextel Cup victories and 20 top-five finishes in 36 starts came behind the wheel of a Monte Carlo.
If you think the fact that both are Chevrolets is only a coincidence, I've got a one-owner AMC Pacer in my garage that is dying for a new home.
While I'm not certain what one wears to a Caribbean wedding, Johnson would have been remiss not to put on a bow tie, given the part the folks in the Chevy lab coats have played in his career.
One of those was Herb Fishel, Chevrolet's recently retired director of racing, who immediately took a shine to the slender Californian who was so precise in the car and so affable outside of it.
"Oh yeah," Johnson said about the value of a handshake in big-time motor sports. "That's the same for everyone. Every step along the way you have to have great people around you to get stuff done, and I've had great people along the way to help me get to where I am today."
And as for where he was yesterday, Johnson said his off-road roots probably helped him adjust to the new NASCAR rules that have caused "hysteria," to use racing rival Mark Martin's word, among some of his colleagues. A new, shorter rear spoiler in theory will make the cars "loose," or more difficult to drive.
At least Johnson hopes so. The 29-year-old charger from El Cajon, Calif., likes his race cars like he likes his ... well, his off-road race cars. Nothing wrong with being a little loose, he says, especially when the other guys prefer to drive tight cars.
"There's a lot of movement in the car," Johnson said after spending Monday morning driving around in circles. "But I think with my background in the dirt and my driving style, that is something that will help me. It's not going to hurt me as much as it would some other guys."
So it would appear there is more than one way to pave one's success in NASCAR. And as Jimmie Johnson has so aptly illustrated, sometimes the asphalt is optional.
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