If Jimmie Johnson needed any advice about how to handle his big moment during his NASCAR Hall of Fame induction, one imagines he’d have a lot of people at Hendrick Motorsports to rely on. One such person was Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was inducted into the HoF in 2021 and shared his word of advice for Johnson ahead of his big night.
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Speaking ahead of the ceremony that immortalized Johnson, his crew chief Chad Knaus, and Donnie Allison in NASCAR gold, Junior revealed the toughest part about such a night, which was “allowing yourself to make sure you accept everything is happening. “
“No matter how hard you try to enjoy every single moment, it still goes by in a whir. And I will say the most fun I ever had in my life giving any kind of speech or speaking in front of a crowd was on that stage for whatever reason,” he said. “I wasn’t nervous. I was very confident in whatever I was going to say, what I was going to share, and I felt like that got across everything I wanted to get across to the people in the crowd.”
Junior explained that one of the things he will remember the most from his HoF induction was climbing up to the stage terrified to address such a big crowd, but getting up there and realizing he was going to “have a blast.” He added, “Because you never do get to do it again.”
“There’s always another race. But there’s never another speech like this, never another moment where you’ll be celebrating like this. So you do have to make sure you take it all in.”
Jimmie Johnson once rushed Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the hospital at 2:00 am
Apart from being part of the same team and competing against and with each other for a long time in NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson are also pretty good friends. And as the saying goes ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed,’ Johnson proved that he was that friend.
Before they became teammates at HMS, Johnson was celebrating a race win with a pool party to which Junior was also invited. In the celebration, things got pretty wild pretty fast when Junior decided to jump into the pool, except that when he did, he emerged with a big wound to his head.
Soon after everyone realized the severity of the DEI driver’s injury, Johnson came to his rescue and took his future teammate to the hospital.
This act by Jimmie Johnson left a big impression on Earnhardt about the kind of person the NASCAR Hall of Famer was, along with being a pretty decent driver.
