Jimmie Johnson’s Tribute to Closest Friend Who Died a Tragic Death Captured in the Most Touching Manner

Any coffee-table book about Jimmie Johnson is going to be a hit. Who wouldn’t want to know the story of one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history? Add to that a foreword from none other than Michael Jordan, and you have a bestseller. The photo-biography has a lot of interesting stories from Jimmie Johnson’s childhood up till his retirement, one of which is about his friendship with Blaise Alexander.

A two-page picture of a #81 Chevy driven by Alexander, with Johnson’s #92 Chevy on the other side. Most people wouldn’t understand the significance of that picture. Alexander and Johnson had been battling in an Xfinity Series race at Richmond in 2000 when the cameraman snapped that picture. The former was one of Johnson’s closest friends.

A sad day for Johnson and NASCAR

Unfortunately, Alexander died in a racing crash suffered during an ARCA Menards Series in Charlotte in 2001. Such was their friendship that Johnson carried a decal in honor of the late Alexander in his #48 all his career.

According to Yahoo Sports, Johnson revealed, “As they edited the book, they pointed to the photograph and were like, ‘We just felt like it was a good photo, it’s you in the old car, and the colors popped, and we loved the symmetry of it.’” 

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“I told them the Blaise story and why that was important. I was like, ‘Well, here’s why this photo is important to me.’ Obviously, with it being Blaise [Alexander] and Blaise is nowhere else in the book, the photo ended up staying as a result.”

A touching story of an unfortunate end to what was a beautiful friendship. Classy from Johnson to honor Alexander in these ways.

What is the Jimmie Johnson book about?

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Jimmie Johnson’s “One More Lap: Jimmie Johnson and the #48” is a coffee-table book that he carefully curated and compiled alongside the editors. Published by Rizzoli, they have symbolically priced the book at $48, the number that is now synonymous with Johnson in the NASCAR world.

For Johnson, it was “a ‘Passion project,’ a ‘Labor of Love.’” Articulating how it came to fruition, he said “The early photos, I was more involved with. There were a few I knew I wanted in there. The other photos I left up to them. I had so many photos to choose from. It was daunting to me to think about digging into all the files and thinking about them all.”

But the process was definitely no cakewalk. Being one of the most photographed athletes of all time, Johnson just had so many photographs to choose from. Having raced in the pre-digital era as well as the digital era, they had to make a lot of decisions in terms of what went in, and what didn’t make the cut.

Johnson had already been a part of the docuseries, “Reinventing the Wheel,” when running in the IndyCar Series. But this project was different. “This project, the docuseries and videographers being at the track over the years, I have always archived what is going on and at some point, I thought it was worthwhile to do it.” 

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“But I just wanted to do this for myself,” he felt. His fans deserved it, he deserved it, and NASCAR deserved it. A career like Johnson’s deserves to be feted.