“He Was Pissed”: Jimmie Johnson Was Once Forced to Improvise to Make Peace With Former NASCAR Rival

When you think of ‘a calm driver’ in NASCAR, chances are Jimmie Johnson’s face would come to mind. The Hall of Famer was one of the more relatively composed and level-headed drivers of his era. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t make his rivals angry at him. One such instance happened with Ward Burton back in the day.

During one of the races in New Hampshire in 2003, a young Johnson ended up wrecking Burton, albeit unintentionally. But that didn’t change the fact that Burton was pretty mad at him.

So how did Johnson make peace with the angry veteran? What was Johnson’s way of dealing with angry drivers after races?

This was something he opened up on during an interview with USA Today in 2015. “Get in touch with them somehow. It usually ends up being a phone call,” he said. Johnson also touched upon the time when this method of connecting over a phone call with an angry rival didn’t work, which happened with Ward Burton in 2003. “I’d call his cell, and he’d answer and hang up. He was pissed,” Johnson recalled.

So how did Johnson finally make peace with Burton?

Well, he got a hold of his office phone number and convinced Burton’s secretary to put him through. “When he finally got on the phone, I know he was cussing at me, but with that thick accent and as mad as he was, it took a while for us to actually understand each other,” he described.

Jimmie Johnson once made Jeff Gordon mad at him

During a race at Texas Motor Speedway back in 2010, an on-track incident involving Jimmie Johnson from which his Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon came out worse, ended up making the 4x Cup champion pretty angry at his teammate.

After the teammates tussled fighting for a 2nd place finish, Gordon sent out a message to his crew chief Steve Letarte, taking a jibe at Johnson. “Four-time is a little upset. He [expects] to be treated different than everybody else,” Gordon said.