Name: Chad Knaus, Crew Chief for No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet

Hometown: Rockford, Ill.

Birthdate: Aug. 5, 1971

Everyone knows he's won back-to-back NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titles with driver Jimmie Johnson, but here are a few things most people don't know about Chad:

• Oreos tempt him, and he'll sniff out a sushi restaurant anywhere.
• He's met his match in Jimmie Johnson.
• The only way he'd go back to the short track would be in a late model once the crew chief gig starts to wane.

And that's just the beginning.

During a recent interview at Daytona International Speedway, the reigning champion crew chief opened up about his experience atop the pit box, how he got started, his friends off and on the track and going to his hometown - and one of his favorite - tracks, Chicagoland Speedway.

There's no place like home

Heading to his home turf for the first night race at Chicagoland Speedway, Chad's more than a little excited, especially with family expected to be there.

"I really want to win there. My father and stepmother come up, and I usually have some friends come into town for the race. I've got some friends coming in this weekend. My brother's coming, so I really am excited about going there.

"It's one of my favorite race tracks. It's a phenomenal facility and it's obviously not far from where I grew up. It's just outside of Chicago. It's a phenomenal city. It's one of my favorite cities in the world, so it's definitely a place I like to race.

How it all started

He and his driver may dominate the big tracks, but it's the small Midwest tracks that fostered a love of racing for Chad.

"My father and I were racing throughout Rockford Speedway and Madison, Wis.,... I mean we hit every race track there was throughout the Midwest and the asphalt series.

"(We) had a lot of fun. I was real familiar with the likes of Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace. When I was a child, that's who my dad was racing against. And right after I graduated high school in 1989, I moved to North Carolina in hopes of getting into a racing team, and it didn't work out initially. (In) a round-about way, (I) got back to Rockford and spent another season with my father and won another championship."

During the early 1990s, Chad says he got involved with Stanley Smith Racing out of Birmingham, Ala., and moved there to run in the All-American challenge series. He worked on cars that ran Limited Sportsman, which was a NASCAR racing series at that point in time similar to the ARCA division now. The team also ran Nationwide Series and 15 Sprint Cup races a year.

Is there a team he hasn't worked with?

In 1993, Chad went to work at Hendrick Motorsports to join the No. 24 team with Ray Evernham as crew chief.

"It was a good time, and I was very young at that point in time, obviously, and grew up through the ranks."

He stayed there until 1998, and then went to Dale Earnhardt Inc. for about eight months, where he said "things didn't work out for me."

"I left there and went to work for Darrell Waltrip at Tyler Jett Motorsports and was there for a couple years. Then Ray Evernham called me and asked me if I'd go back to work with him on the Dodge Development Program... . All of 1999 and 2000 I was with Evernham Motorsports, and we developed the Dodge Intrepid for Dodge for the NASCAR racing series. That was a lot of fun. That's when I got my first taste of being a crew chief on the Cup side with Casey Atwood and had a lot of fun."

It was a good fit, and Chad was successful, but there was one more hurdle - being atop the pit box.

You can call me "Chief" now

Chad's first full-time, full-season as a Cup crew chief came in 2001 with Melling Racing and driver Stacy Compton.

"I learned an awful lot and had a lot of success. (We) qualified up front a lot, ran up front an awful lot and really did very well for such a small organization. We only had about 14 full-time employees and we were racing against some pretty big teams at that point in time and to accomplish what we were able to accomplish was pretty incredible."

Along came Jimmie - with a golf club in hand

In late 2001, Rick Hendrick was looking someone to lead Jimmie Johnson's Cup side ride, and it was Chad that got the call.

"Mr. Hendrick had mentioned it to me and called and touched base with me, and then Brian Whitesell (currently team manager for No. 88 and No. 5 cars) and Ken Howes (currently vice president of competition at Hendrick Motorsports) approached me. We all got together and had a discussion, and Jimmie and I went out to lunch and went out and played golf the next day.

"The rest is history. So that's the abbreviated version of about 17 years of work and travel and everything else."

When others want what you've got

Even as the defending - or reigning, as Chad prefers - champions, there's always distractions and distracters.

"Obviously, team work is very difficult to maintain through good times and through bad times. As you have success, you have a lot of competitors out there who think that one certain person on your team is the one that maybe is developing and creating the success and you can call it cherry-picking. You can call it pursuing, whatever you want to call it.

"Your guys are always being approached by competitors to come and work for them because they think that they've got the secret, the idea, the trick or whatever it may be. So, that's very difficult."

Maintaining the drive

"Probably one of the other hard things that you always have to battle is the whole fact that when you come off of a winning season to go into the next season to maintain the winning desire and drive is very, very hard.

"And everybody says �well, everybody wants to win,' but the fact of the matter is if you go and have success people will tend to sit back and think it's a little easier - maybe lay back on their laurels a little bit. So to keep that drive and determination is very, very tough."

Don't tell the Department of Labor

"Lazy" is not a word to describe what Chad and his crew do. Besides the long stretch of race weekend, it's more than a full-time deal to be on a team.

"It's a tough, grueling deal. The crew chiefs, we get home late on Sunday nights, and we get up early Monday morning. We work seven days a week - Department of Labor probably doesn't want to hear that but that's the facts of it.

"We were on the road an awful lot. Our family lives struggle, if there is one. You just keep working. It's all about hard work and determination. That's what makes people in this sport successful.

"I've never heard of anybody say �you know a Smokey Yunick or Richard Petty or a Ray Evernham or a Rick Wilson was lazy.' That's one thing that I admire about the guys that have been in the sport, (that) were the root of the sport. They worked hard. You know Alan Kulwicki, Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace, all those guys gave their life blood to be successful in this industry, and if you want to be successful on the crew chief level, on the mechanic level or any level there is, you have to do the same thing."

It's good to have friends

Drivers that have earned Chads praise as well as friendship are plenty - Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne to name just a few. But one guy trumps them all.

"Jimmie's (Johnson) awesome. He's a phenomenal guy. He's one of my best friends. We get along great. We give each other a hard time. We don't get too wound up when someone gets on someone else's case. If I get on him a little bit he doesn't carry it on his shoulders for too long."

"Right now I think Jimmie's probably my match... I can't think of another driver at this point that I would want that's in the garage right now."

There's enough praise to go around

But it's not just the driver-crew chief relationship that keeps Chad inspired.

"The thing that Jimmie and I are very fortunate for is that we've got a great organization. We've got a great team."

"Hendrick Motorsports is 550+ strong, and we've got great guys and gals. We've got a huge engineering staff, huge resources. There's nothing that I've ever wanted more since I've worked there. That's just testament to Rick Hendrick and what we've got going on there. And then you know the 80-something people we've got working in the 24, 48 shop. They're phenomenal guys. They're great guys."

Ready for an evolution

Advanced technology and new faces in the garage are things Chad sees as an evolution of the crew chief position, not necessarily a revolution.

"It is gonna change. You know a lot of the technology side used to be completely driven by the crew chief. Now it's done by some of the engineers that we have coming into the sport - very intelligent guys. I'm not talking just an engineer with a piece of paper because there's probably people walking around with a degree that shouldn't. There's crew chiefs in this garage that just don't have that piece of paper that are way smarter than the engineers out there.

But I think you're going to see a lot of things engineer-based, technologically evolving into different models, different programs, simulation. Things of that nature.

"The crew chief's role is going to continue to evolve to almost a play maker. He's going to be given all of the tools and all of the information, and then he's going to put it together to happen. As far as me personally, I don't know what's going to happen, just going to have to wait and see."

Any chance of a return to short tracks?

"No. No. No."

"I love what we do. I love our sport. As much as we complain about it behind closed doors and even sometimes not behind closed doors... if I go back short track racing it would be myself in a late model having fun as my career starts to dwindle down a little bit.

A crew chief's gotta eat

When he's working, it's hauler eats with long hours meaning coffee in the morning and "maybe a little tea in the afternoon," but off the track there's one thing Chad will always seek out - sushi. "I love sushi."

Another culinary treat for Chad? Oreos. With a glass of milk.

Now you know.

"I've had an amazing career"

Chad admits he's complained about NASCAR and the rules in the past, but he knows it's part of the sport - and in the end, worth it all.

"I've had an amazing career. � If it wasn't for NASCAR, this whole thing, I don't know where I would be.

"Just everything this sport has given me has been pretty phenomenal. There's not much that I, fortunately enough, haven't been involved in one way or another."

Check out his podcast Here