Leaders Gordon, Johnson chasing first win at Texas

Since inception into the Cup schedule in 1997, Texas Motor Speedway has been a wild card. Of the 13 races at Texas, only Jeff Burton has won more than once. Four of the 12 Chase drivers have reached Victory Lane at Texas.

Of the other eight drivers in the Chase that haven't won at Texas, site of Sunday's Dickies 500 (3 p.m. ET, ABC), the most surprising are the top three drivers in the standings.

• Jeff Gordon has five top-fives at Texas, the most of any Chase driver. Earlier this season, Gordon started on the pole and finished fourth.

"I can honestly say this is one of the first times I'm excited about racing here from a competitive standpoint," said Gordon, who has six victories this season and 81 wins during his 15-year career, but none at Texas. "I've always loved the facility, but it's been hit or miss for us.

"We've been close to victory the past couple of times. But for whatever crazy reason -- whether it's an electrical problem while leading or me smacking the wall off Turn 4 while leading -- we just haven't won."

• Jimmie Johnson has closed the gap between first and second to only nine points with back-to-back wins. Johnson has three top-five and six top-10 finishes at Texas.

• Clint Bowyer hasn't won at Texas in the Cup Series, but he has been to Victory Lane there in the Craftsman Truck Series. He currently is 111 points behind Gordon and 102 points behind Johnson.

"If Jeff or Jimmie have one bad race, we could be right there. We've just got to keep doing what we've been doing," Bowyer said. "We gained a few points on those guys in Atlanta but we struggled the whole race. We got lucky and ended up with a decent finish and that's something that we've gotten a lot better at.

"A top five is the number one goal but it seems like we need to win to compete with the guys we're racing for a championship. We're improving on our best finishes at just about all of these tracks since the Chase started so if we can do that in Texas this weekend, that'll be a good day for us."

These next four Chase drivers have grabbed elusive Texas wins:

• Tony Stewart won the Dickies 500 last year on a late-season run when he won three of the last 10 races in 2006. Stewart dominated the race starting eighth and leading 278 of the 334 laps.

"We had a car that was good all day long from start to finish. In my 28 years of racing it's rare that I've had a car that good," Stewart said. "It puts you in a positive frame of mind when you go to a track knowing that you've run well there before. Zippy (crew chief Greg Zipadelli) knows how to find the kind of balance I like in the car that makes me comfortable. The more comfortable I am, the faster we go."

• Burton captured his only win of this season at Texas in the spring, becoming the first driver to repeat at the track. He was the first driver ever to win at the 1.5-mile track. Currently in eighth, Burton had a boost this past weekend with a fifth-place finish at Atlanta -- his second top-five in the Chase.

• Carl Edwards captured a second-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway last weekend, moving him up to fourth in the Chase standings. That top-five just might be the spark to get the 99 team turned around to make a late run at the championship. Edwards won at Texas in 2005 by edging teammate Matt Kenseth and then teammate Mark Martin. Earlier this year Edwards finished 12th at Texas.

• Kenseth is coming off his second consecutive top-five. Of the Chase drivers, Kenseth has the second-most top-fives at Texas with four, and earlier this season finished second there. (Continued)