If there’s one thing Jimmie Johnson doesn’t need these days, it’s another reason for everyone to make him and his No. 48 team a focus of attention.

Three weeks ago, after Johnson won the MBNA 400 at Dover, several teams had people hang around to watch the car go through postrace inspection.

They suspected that Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus, was up to something that made the car’s rear end stick up, giving it more downforce. And they were right – but the shock absorbers on Johnson’s car were deemed legal in the inspection. A week later, NASCAR issued new rules aimed at doing away with many of the very things that made the shocks on the car that day different.

The next weekend, at Talladega, Johnson got into the rear of Elliott Sadler’s car on the 20th lap of the UAW-Ford 500, starting an eight-car wreck that was especially damaging for Chase for the Nextel Cup contender Mark Martin.

Johnson initially blamed Dale Earnhardt Jr. for hitting him to start the wreck, but after seeing replays Johnson took responsibility for the crash.

Johnson then finished sixth in Sunday’s Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway, but he still trails leader Tony Stewart by 92 points in the Nextel Cup standings.

Jimmie Johnson has won four of the past five Nextel Cup races at Lowe's Motor Speedway. He hopes to make it five of six - and four straight - at the North Carolina track Saturday in the AW-GM Quality 500

Now, he comes to Lowe’s Motor Speedway, the 1.5-mile track near Charlotte, N.C., where he’s won the past three and four of the past five Nextel Cup points races.

All eyes will once again be on the 30-year-old California native in Saturday night’s UAW-GM 500 as he tries to become the first driver ever to win four straight Cup races at LMS. Only Johnson and Fred Lorenzen have won three in a row – Lorenzen did that in 1964-65.

“I’ve been waiting for our success to slow down at Charlotte,” Johnson said. “I thought it would be that way in the spring. We got off to a slow start but by the end of the night we made the right adjustments and ended up winning the race.”

Johnson led 10 of the first 115 laps in the 400-lap Coca-Cola 600 on May 29. But with 44 laps remaining he was 20th and trapped on the tail end of the lead lap for a restart. He and Knaus had been struggling to find the handling after the sun went down on the newly ground Lowe’s Motor Speedway surface, and it wasn’t until they were almost out of time until they found it.

Johnson clawed his way back toward the front and, coming off Turn 4 on the final lap, went to the outside of Bobby Labonte to challenge for the lead and the victory. As the cars crossed the finish line, Johnson was .027-seconds ahead – a distance of maybe 3 or 4 four feet.

Johnson has won four times in the past three seasons at LMS. The only race he didn’t win in that span was the fall race in 2003, in which he finished third behind Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman.

Johnson made his Nextel Cup debut at Charlotte in October 2001 and finished 39th. Since then, his worst Cup finish here is seventh.

Johnson didn’t test his Cup car at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last month, but he did test a Busch Series car he’ll run in Friday night’s race. He felt good about that test and about the controversial work that’s been done on the surface of the track that had, in May’s Coca-Cola 600, a Nextel Cup-record 22 cautions.

“It’s still Charlotte,” Johnson said, which would figure to be a good thing for him. “When the sun is out, the track is slick and it’s tough to get a hold of. As night comes, the track gets faster and the grip level increases.”

Johnson was glad to see that parts of the track’s surface that hadn’t been ground in May have been smoothed since, especially the low line in the exit of Turn 2.

“Before, we had the old surface in certain areas and the new surface in other areas,” he said. “You had a huge change in grip level as you went through the corner and I think that caused a lot of problems.

“In the Busch test, it seemed as if the grip level was equal around the entire corner, which made things a little better. I don’t expect it to be as tough as it was in the spring.”