Martin Truex Jr. has won the fan vote before to advance into the Sprint All-Star Race, and as Saturday night's event nears, he's among the top-five vote-getters.
Only Truex has no intention of relying on ballots to race for $1 million at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
His goal is to win the Sprint Showdown, the qualifying race before the All-Star race. The top two finishers of the Showdown and fan vote winner all move on to the All-Star race.
"I'm looking forward to going there and hopefully winning the Showdown again, which we've done before," Truex said. "The All-Star Race is one of the funnest events of the year. To not be a part of it is pretty miserable. Hopefully, we'll be able to make it in that thing, have some fun, chase a couple million bucks."
Truex's last Cup victory was in 2007. But he won the all-star qualifier in 2007, and believes doing so again this year might be the push his Michael Waltrip Racing team needs.
"It would be a great thing for our team," he said. "We won it in 2007. After that it seemed to kick-start our team. Went to Dover, ran second or third, ended up making the Chase for the first time that year. I definitely think there's some incentive there. It builds confidence. It gets the guys pumped up.
"I feel like we should win that race. Anything less would be a disappointment. We're going there guns loaded trying to do all we can do, and hopefully we'll come out on the right side of it this time."