For the first time since the 1990s, Jimmie Johnson will compete in short course off-road racing. Toyota recently purchased a Pro 4 truck from Greaves Motorsports, which will be fielded for a rotation of drivers including Johnson throughout the 2025 Championship Off-Road season.

The Inside Line, a series of driver stories produced by Championship Off-Road, mentioned the news in its latest edition about Greaves Motorsports’ scion CJ Greaves and that the Pro 4 would be shared by various “high-profile drivers”. The Greaves’ partnership with Toyota long predates COR and has been wildly successful, with CJ having won the last four Pro 4 titles in a row.

Prior to becoming one of NASCAR’s all-time greats with seven Cup Series titles and 83 wins at the top level, Johnson cut his teeth in off-road racing of both the desert and short course varieties. He starred in Mickey Thompson stadium trucks in the early ’90s, the youngest driver to compete (15 years old) and win a feature race (19 years) in the series, before heading to SCORE. His time in Baja didn’t last long, infamously crashing out of the 1995 Baja 1000 after falling asleep at the wheel, before Chevrolet withdrew his SCORE factory backing to focus on SODA, so he went there instead.

In SODA, Johnson raced a Chevrolet C1500 in Class 8 and Heavy Metal for Herzog Motorsports. He enjoyed success out of the gate like winning at I-96, then claimed the 1996 Off-Road Winter Series overall title at Glen Helen while doubling as a track reporter for ESPN.

“At just 22 years old, Johnson might be the Jeff Gordon of off-road racing,” wrote then-San Bernardino County Sun writer and current NBC analyst Nate Ryan in late 1997. Ironically, or perhaps forebodingly depending on who you ask, Gordon would become Johnson’s teammate and boss in NASCAR.

After a successful 1997 campaign in Pro 2, Johnson and Herzog moved to stock cars for 1998. He competed in ASA before moving up to the NASCAR Busch Series, where he spent two seasons and won a race for Herzog. Gordon recruited him to Hendrick Motorsports and the Cup Series, and the rest is history. In 2019, Johnson paid tribute to his roots by running a Darlington throwback based on the “Butch” SCORE truck that Nelson & Nelson built for him.

Johnson has been dabbling in various disciplines since retiring from full-time Cup competition in 2020, most notably trying out IndyCar and sports cars. In 2022, he technically made his off-road return at the Race of Champions on the snow and ice of Pite Havsbad, Sweden, where he and Colton Herta led Team USA to the Nations Cup finals before Johnson was knocked out of the individual tournament’s quarterfinal. His NASCAR team Legacy Motor Club expanded into Extreme E for the 2024 season, where Johnson was scheduled to run a part-time schedule before the series cut the year short to focus on becoming Extreme H.

In February, just a week after finishing third at the Daytona 500, Johnson went to Switzerland to drive a Porsche 904 on ice at the International Concours of Elegance St. Moritz.

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