Jimmie Johnson isn’t king of this road

Reporting from Sonoma, Calif. — Jimmie Johnson has 50 victories in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, including three this season, and he has won the series championship the last four years in a row.

He has also earned $92 million in purse money, and at times the El Cajon native has won so frequently that he has been blamed for making Cup racing too predictable, too boring.

But one event Johnson hasn’t won is the Cup race at the hilly, 10-turn Infineon Raceway here, even though Johnson cut his teeth in the rough-and-tumble world of off-road racing. And while it’s merely a blemish in an otherwise illustrious resume, it still rubs Johnson the wrong way.

“This is just an irritation,” Johnson said Friday before qualifying second for Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350, which will be his ninth Cup race at Infineon. “I know I can do this.”

Defending race winner Kasey Kahne won the pole position with a lap of 93.893 mph on the 1.99-mile track.

Johnson, 34, said he guards against dwelling on how much he wants this victory. “I’m not going to let my desire to go out and try to win this race become too intense,” he said. “I think I do my best driving when I’m relaxed and having fun.”

The Hendrick Motorsports driver opened the season as though he was going to waltz to a fifth consecutive championship, winning three of the first five races — at Fontana, Las Vegas and Bristol, Tenn. — and leading the points into late April.

But then Johnson cooled. He went one five-race stretch with only one top-15 finish. Although he has finished fifth and sixth in the last two races at Pocono and Michigan, respectively, he arrived in Sonoma having dropped to sixth in the standings.

It’s the top 12 drivers in points after 26 races who compete in NASCAR’s Chase for the Cup title playoff in the season’s final 10 races. The 26th race is Sept. 11 in Richmond, Va.

“There’s no doubt that the month of May was tough on us,” Johnson said. “I made mistakes. We had some unfortunate luck. We just had some bad races. I don’t think we’re in a slump. We’re not where we want to be, but I wouldn’t call it a slump.”

Still, Johnson said it’s too early to think about a fifth championship. The first priority, he said, is making the Chase.

“The last two weekends have been more about stopping the bleeding, and that would be losing so many points and slipping further and further down closer to that 12th-place cutoff,” he said. “We did a good job the last two weeks not taking unnecessary risks and I drove within my means and didn’t stick it in the fence or anything.

“At some point during the regular season every team is going struggle some and need to catch up,” Johnson said. “As much as I hate to live through it right now, I’m excited that it’s now and it’s not September.”

james.peltz@latimes.com