* Johnson has made eight Sprint Cup Series starts at Homestead-Miami
Speedway where he has earned two top-five and five top-10 finishes.
* The 1.5-mile oval is one of only six Sprint Cup tracks on which
Johnson hasn't visited Victory Lane. The others are Bristol, Infineon,
Chicago, Watkins Glen and Michigan.
* Johnson has completed 93.3% (1998 of 2141) of competition laps at the
track and has led 43.
* He has an average start and finish of 21.6 and 13.6.
Chassis
* Johnson has piloted primary chassis number 553 to Victory Lane twice
this season, at Indianapolis in July and California in October.
* Johnson last drove backup chassis number 558 to a win at Lowe's Motor
Speedway in October.
JIMMIE JOHNSON:
Looking ahead to Miami, you've done this obviously three times now. When
you get to Miami, what's the process? Is there a checklist? Kind of
talk about how you're going to approach that weekend. What's the stress
level like, that stuff? "The more we can keep it the same, the better
it is. There is a lot of media leading up to the race, of course, a lot
of questions that come about, that I don't really think of things in
those terms. I find leaving the media briefing, media stuff we do on
Wednesday, Thursday, there's a lot of thoughts swirling in the brain
that were never there because I really try to keep it simple, keep
things the same.
"Hopefully I can leave the media get-together and shake all that stuff
out, focus on the race and treat it, you know, like I would a typical
race. That's really the goal. Don't end up there all the time. It's not
as easy to pull off as it sounds. But that's my goal and I would assume
everybody else's goal, to try to keep it the same and try to keep the
stress down."
CHAD KNAUS:
Heading into this weekend at Homestead Miami Speedway, it's the only
track on the Chase schedule that you guys haven't won at, and I'm
wondering if the reason is mainly because you're going in protecting a
lead, or is there something else about that track that you guys haven't
quite figured out yet? "Well, I think if you look at it, we've had
obviously both scenarios play out there. We've had races that we've had
to win to try to win the championship, we've had races that we needed to
go in there and just be protective and try to make sure we didn't lose
it.
"So I think that we haven't hit on exactly what it is that we need
there, although I feel like our package going into Homestead this year
is probably the best that we've had yet, so I'm excited about that. I
think we can go in there this weekend with the aggressiveness that we
need. We sat on the pole there a couple years ago. I think it was 2006.
I think we can go down there and battle for the pole and hopefully get
ourselves in position to race for the win.
"But you know, we're not going to do anything silly, either, to take
ourselves out of contention or out of a place that we can possibly win
this thing. So we're just going to have to play it by ear and hopefully
we can be in a position to race for it and hopefully win this thing. It
would be awesome. But obviously the big prize has to be the thing first
and foremost on our minds."
-credit: hm
