Jimmie Johnson has a great track record at Chicagoland Speedway. In fact, he has the best driver rating out of all of the active NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers there. However, he has never visited victory lane in Chicago. Will this be the weekend he gets to check it off of the list?

Sunday’s first race of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship looms large as the quest for the No. 48 team’s record sixth title begins. The team will be chasing that elusive win at Chicagoland, a place where Knaus & Company would like nothing more than to own just a small piece of property adjacent to the track – the little area known as victory lane.

Here’s what Johnson had to say about Chicago:

“I always like going to Chicago. I think the city is great and I know there are a lot of race fans in the area. We’ve never won there, which is kind of frustrating, especially because we’ve been close so many times. It’s also Chad’s (Knaus, crew chief) home track. We really want to give him a win there. We’ve won in California (Johnson’s home state) several times and it’s time he gets to experience winning at home. I feel like we owe him one and we’re going to do everything we can to give him that opportunity this weekend.”

Race Stats

• No wins.
• One pole (July 2005).
• Five top-five finishes (50 percent) and eight top-10s (80 percent) in 10 starts.
• One DNF (did not finish – April 2007).
• Average start of 8.2 and average finish of 10.0.
• Sprint Cup’s best driver rating (112.2 average of a possible 150 points).
• Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill. is one of five tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit where Johnson has yet to win. Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International, Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Kentucky Speedway in Sparta are the others.
• Johnson enters the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Championship as the second seed. It is the fourth time in nine years that Johnson has entered the Chase as the second seed.