"I was a little taken aback": When Jimmie Johnson's pure talent surprised Jeff Gordon at Darlington in 2000

In 2000, Jimmie Johnson, a driver in the Xfinity Series, took part in a test at Darlington. In the same test, Hendrick Motorsports superstar Jeff Gordon, a multiple Cup champion, and Rick Hendrick's son Ricky Hendrick were also in attendance as spectators.

As Jimmie Johnson hit the track, he caught Gordon's eye, following which the NASCAR legend enquired about the young driver with Hendrick, who was already friends with Johnson.

“(Ricky) said, ‘Oh, that’s Jimmie Johnson.' I had heard of Jimmie, but I had not met him in person. I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Hey, this guy has got some talent.’ I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t believe Ricky when he said it. I was a little taken back. I didn’t say a whole lot but it kind of stuck with me," Gordon recalled in an interview from 2020, via NY Times.

Interest from someone like Gordon, a household name at that point in NASCAR, convinced Johnson that he had done something to 'impress him.' The driver, who would go on to join the ranks of Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Richard Petty as a 7x Cup champion, even surpassing Jeff Gordon, claimed that his experience of racing in the ASA Series and at Salem of running the fence helped him at that test at Darlington.

And it was at that test where Gordon first got acquainted with Johnson's talent, in the wake of which HMS signed him in their fourth team as the #48 driver.

Jeff Gordon expressed his surprise at Jimmie Johnson's NASCAR success

In his illustrious NASCAR career, almost all of which was spent with HMS as a driver, Jimmie Johnson achieved many things. Most notably, he became only the third driver to have won seven Cup championships, five of which came in a row between 2006 and 2010.

Johnson also won 83 races in the Cup Series between 2002 and 2020 at HMS, including multiple crown jewel races at Daytona, Darlington, and Charlotte.

Ahead of his retirement as a full-timer with HMS after the 2020 season, Rick Hendrick revealed he felt 'very blessed' to have known Jimmie Johnson and for all the races and championships he won for HMS.

Jeff Gordon, the man who spotted Johnson's talent in 2000 in that Darlington test, confessed that even he couldn't have anticipated the level of success he'd achieve.

"I had pretty high expectations, but even as high as your expectations could’ve been, you could never predict what he was going to go on to do," Gordon said of Jimmie Johnson.

Following his retirement in 2020, Johnson went on to try his hand at IndyCar, where he spent two seasons between 2021 and 2022. Although Johnson never won a race in the single-seater, he did achieve a couple of top-10 finishes.

After that, Johnson announced his comeback to NASCAR in 2023 as the owner of the Legacy Motor Club, a team for which he makes part-time race appearances as well.