He’s tied with The King and Dale, Sr. for the most championships. He’s the only driver to win five consecutive championships in a row. He’s got a win streak in NASCAR that reads like a novel…yet Jimmie Johnson cut his teeth not on the ovals, but in the dirt. He started out racing motorcycles when he was small fry, but by his teenage years he was a fixture in the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group (MTEG)’s stadium truck racing series. You remember names like Ivan “Ironman” Stewart and Rob MacCachran, don’t you? That’s where 19-year-old Johnson found himself at the 1994 Las Vegas event, held at Sam Boyd Stadium. Running in a team with Ricky Johnson (no relation) and driving Chevrolet S-10s in the Grand National Sport Truck class, Jimmie didn’t look like he had a fair shot. In 1994, would you bet on the 19-year-old or Ironman Stewart in the Toyota?

Jimmie moved onto asphalt oval racing in 1996 and the rest is written as NASCAR lore, it seems, but make no mistake, the dude can drive just about anything you put him into! We’d love to see him hop back into a stadium truck and see if he can still handle the bumps and jumps!

(Thanks to Anthony Mahone for the tip!)