{"id":151212,"date":"2025-09-17T21:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/151212\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T21:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T21:06:07","slug":"ryan-blaney-lauds-jimmie-johnson-as-nascar-legend-celebrates-milestone-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/151212\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney lauds Jimmie Johnson as NASCAR legend celebrates milestone – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> champion and the sixth-winningest driver in the sport\u2019s history, Jimmie Johnson<\/a>, has turned 50.<\/p>\n

Since making his Cup Series debut in 2001, Johnson, who intends to continue racing part-time for the foreseeable future<\/a>, has served as an inspiration to many, not least 2023 champion Ryan Blaney<\/a>. Commemorating the longtime Hendrick Motorsport star\u2019s birthday, Team Penske\u2019s Blaney revealed the importance of Johnson in his career, and how he\u2019s long aimed to emulate the 83-time race winner both on and off the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Jimmie Johnson. He is not only, in my book, one of the best race car drivers that have ever done it, he’s also one of the best human beings that has ever walked the earth,\u201d Blaney said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. \u201cLike, just a very genuine guy, incredibly funny, incredibly fun to hang around with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd racing around him was just like, I don’t know, it was one of the most special things,\u201d he added, going on to say, \u201cI got to race with him for a handful of years, and was in the race when he won his seventh title in \u201816, and that was just super, super amazing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo racing around him, it was just like racing around an urban legend. Growing up the years where he won five in a row was\u2026 I was in my early years, I was 11 years old or something like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd seeing him go through this for five years was pretty spectacular and amazing. And just being around him, you felt like you were walking kind of on, like, holy ground when you’d stand next to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blaney labeled Johnson \u201cone of the best racers that I\u2019ve ever seen through my eyes,\u201d complimenting his \u201crespectful\u201d demeanor. The 31-year-old admitted that both on track and off, he has long worked to emulate his \u201cpersona.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a kid, and it’s like, \u2018How do you not want to be like that guy?\u2019\u201d Blaney said. \u201cHe’s just dominating the sports. And then how he carried himself outside the car was just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS…<\/p>\n

But while Blaney\u2019s admiration for Johnson is obvious, this hasn\u2019t stopped the two from clashing during their careers. In 2019, Blaney spun Johnson at Watkins Glen, with the former going on to finish fifth while the latter crossed the line in 19th.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A back-and-forth between the two followed, with Johnson particularly angered by the situation, claiming Blaney was \u201cnervous or scared\u201d during their post-race discussion, via NASCAR\/NBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came down on me. I apologized to him right then and there, even though it was his fault,\u201d Blaney said of the incident. \u201cI have a lot of respect for Jimmie \u2013 or had a lot of respect \u2013 that\u2019s why I kind of let him chew my ass out for a minute, minute-and-a-half or whatever he did and I didn\u2019t go back into him, especially when he put a finger in my face.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen his comments after we got done talking pretty much threw all that out the window. That respect is very little.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, they settled their differences the following week over a couple of beers, with Johnson explaining, \u201cRyan came and knocked on the bus Friday night and showed up with two beers in hand and we sat down and talked about it,\u201d as per FS1.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish it could have happened earlier and sooner. It would\u2019ve saved us both probably some grief, but this stuff happens in racing. We\u2019re not the first ones to disagree on what happened on track and we won\u2019t be the last.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and the sixth-winningest driver in the sport\u2019s history, Jimmie Johnson, has turned 50.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,4384,19115,2332,634,15224,82],"class_list":["post-151212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-jimmie-johnson","tag-motorsport-section","tag-nascar","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}