FORT WORTH – If there is one thing that NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kevin Harvick wants to do more than anything else this weekend is to win Saturday’s Duck Commander 500 race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Harvick, who drives the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Chevrolet for Stewart-Haas Racing, has won five NASCAR XFINITY Series races and one NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at TMS, but he still has yet to make a visit to Victory Lane at TMS in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

“We are excited to be back in Texas,” said Harvick during a telephone interview on Thursday.  “As you look at the weekend for me personally and pretty much the whole team, we haven’t been to Victory Lane here.  So we definitely could find motivation on this particular weekend because we want to get to Victory Lane and get a pair of those boots for the trophy case.”

The 2014 Sprint Cup champion has competed in 26 NSCS races at TMS and has finished twice two times in the past three years.  He has six top-five finishes and 14 top-10s with an average finish of 12.3.  Texas Motor Speedway is one of four tracks (Sonoma Raceway, Kentucky Speedway and Pocono Raceway where Havrick is winless in the Cup Series.  He has won races at 19 of the 23 racetracks where NASCAR races.

“Sometimes you just go to a place where it just doesn’t all come together and this has just been one of those places,” Harvick said.  “It’s exciting for the fact that we have been so competitive over the last couple of years.  We have legitimately been leading laps and have been upfront and doing the things that we need to do to win races.  Now we just need the whole day to come together.”

Havrick enters the Duck Commander 500 with a four-point lead over Jimmie Johnson in the series standings.  Harvick has showed the speed and consistency it takes to reach victory lane. He recorded his first win of the season at Phoenix International Raceway in his third start of the season. He has three top-five finishes, five top-10s and has led 485 laps.

“Obviously, we have run very well at all of the different styles of racetracks, so to me that is the most important thing,” Harvick said.  “We are leading laps and running upfront and doing the things that we need to do to win races.  We’ve had good cars pretty much everywhere we have been.”

Harvick added, “We have to keep that up, keep that position and take advantage of the days that cycle around and all the circumstances that play out.  Hopefully we will capitalized on six or seven of those this year and get yourself in position by the end of the year to have a chance to win a championship in Homestead.”

So far this season there have been five different winners during the first six NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.  Besides Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski have also scored victories.

“We’ve had some great races during the first six races,” Harvick said.  “The downforce package has contributed a lot to that.  There is a lot of room to grow and make that package better as we move forward.  The racing has been fun from the driver’s seat and I think that was the first thing that everyone wanted to achieve.

“As we keep on going down this road and making the adjustments and doing the things that the drivers all think we need to do to the cars, I think the racing will continue to get better.  As the cars slide around and doing the things they are doing with less downforce, then I think that is good for racing.”

Despite Harvick’s recent success, he said that winning on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule has become very difficult in recently years.

“It’s hard to win in this sport,” Harvick said.  “People ask me that all of the time the last few years at Stewart-Hass Racing, ‘man you are out front all of the time.’ But sometimes racing out front is harder than racing six in a pack.  Because there’s so many different things that you can do, you do the opposite of what the leader does, so it’s hard to win races.00

“It’s also hard to be successful on a consistent basis.  For us we are fortunately to be in a position to be competitive every week.  Complaining about that would not be the right thing to do.  Our sport is competitive and you never know who the next person is going to be to win.”

Harvick said that while chasing that elusive Sprint Cup win at Texas is a priority, there are other fond moments that he still looks back on and cherishes.

“I will never forget the Truck Series race we won here in 2011,” Harvick said.  “That was the last race that we won as Truck Series owners in 2011.  We won that night and that was the last race we won at KHI before we shut the teams down.  There was a lot of emotion and time spent to have that team.  That was one of the special moments that we had there.  I’d like to get a win at all of the racetracks that we haven’t won at yet and Texas is one of them.”

Photos courtesy of NASCAR.