There have been signs of life from Joey Logano and the Team Penske No. 22 over the past month but this is still, by far, his worst season with the organization and maybe since joining the Cup Series in 2009 altogether.
There have been weeks where they unload off the hauler with a car that doesn’t even practice or qualify in the top-25. Other weeks, there have been incidents like running into the back of Cole Custer on pit road at Texas. And then there’s just standard-issue bad luck.
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Overall, the three-time champion hasn’t won since May 4, 2025 at Texas. Logano has only two top-5s at Daytona and Martinsville respectively and just five top-10s across 15 starts. On the other hand, he qualified sixth at Watkins Glen and has finished of P8, P14 and P7 at Charlotte, Nashville and Michigan.
Again, this isn’t their standard nor their pedigree but the positive momentum has given them a shot to make the Chase for the Championship even if the math to claim the Bill France Cup seems insurmountable over the final 10 weeks.
All told, this season is such a weird dynamic because Logano is still just 36-years-old and in what most inside the sport will tell you is the prime of a driver’s career. It’s not like there is an expectation of a performance fall-off when most drivers within their peak physical conditioning and driving for one of the big three teams.
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Logano remains paired with Paul Wolfe, who has engineered two of his championships, with 43 overall wins between stints with Brad Keselowski and Logano. It’s probably fair to ask if the two future Hall of Famers just look at each other and trust that their respective resumes will eventually even out against whatever is happening right now.
“No, it is a great question though,” Logano told Motorsport.com on Saturday. “It’s somewhere in between because if you rest on your past, you’ll be stuck in your past because the facts are, everyone’s evolving (and) everyone’s getting better, so you have to keep evolving.
“You have to look for new ways to do things to, whether it’s processes, or the cars, whatever it may be. We got to think outside the box a little bit to find some direction.”
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This downturn in performance actually dates back to last year but Logano and Wolfe are not blaming each other.
“What makes it easier is the fact that we can look at each other and say, ‘okay, we’ve both won three championships and we know how to do this.’ We’ve both won 30 whatever races, right?
“We know how to win. We just have to find a new way of doing it and figure out how to get there. So it’s somewhere in between. If we had never won before, we would be pretty down, but we believe in ourselves and have confidence.
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“We just have to stick together.”
It’s also true that both Ford Performance and Penske are struggling holistically right now. Logano, 17th in the championship standings is just three points behind teammate Austin Cindric and quasi-teammate Josh Berry found out this week he is not returning to Wood Brothers Racing amidst a season where he is 30th in points.
On the other hand, Ryan Blaney is third in the standings with the exact same equipment, but it’s not been easy for Logano and Wolfe to simply replicate what the Jonathan Hassler led team is doing. Lord knows they have tried.
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“Yeah, I mean it’s an open notebook,” Logano said. “We all look at each other’s stuff. I mean, I’ll be real with you, Ryan Blaney is an incredible race car driver. He’s probably the best driver on the racetrack in my opinion. He’s always been really, really fast and that’s not a surprise but now he puts whole races together consistently, when he wasn’t always able to do that before.
“So now he does that and he’s really, really good. His way is different but we have to figure out how to close the gap or figure out my way of doing it. We’ve all tried every set-up approach we could try at this point. Obviously, we are not that stubborn, Paul or me.
“We just want to win. We don’t care if it’s my way, his way, or what the 12 is doing. We just have to figure out the combination that works for me.”
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Logano also isn’t going to place blame on Ford Performance either. With Blaney doing well and the RFK cars showing top-10 consistency, the potential of the No. 22 car is there. This is also an even year, where Logano has traditionally enjoyed his most success.
And regardless of the playoff format, Logano still believes there is a run coming from the No. 22 team because they always seem to put it together in the second half.
“I mean, listen, this NextGen car, you’ve got what you got so what are you going to do,” Logano said. “We can’t go reshape the fenders, we can’t go do all this crazy stuff. We’re boxed right now. So the design of the new car is incredibly important for the success of Ford when we get it. But we are still trying to win this year, right?
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“It’s not like this is a limbo year or something like that so don’t take it that direction. We are still trying to get the most out of this thing and there are years where we have turned it around quickly.”
However, and Logano knows this too, this format doesn’t allow him to simply win his way out of it. Like, if he can even rally to 10th in the regular season standings, he would still start the Chase for the Championship 10 points behind either Tyler Reddick or Denny Hamlin with 10 races to go.
The math doesn’t math for a fourth championship, but never say never.
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“I get it, but it’s still possible, right,” Logano said. “We’re not out. We’re down but we are not out. And this team is pretty resilient. We keep grinding. Every year we won the championship, around this time of year, I tell my wife that I just hope to make the playoffs and then we pop right back into place.
“There’s still a chance.”
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