Joey Logano has been one of the most dominant drivers in the past few seasons, and yet, this season, he hasn’t been anywhere near where he or Team Penske wants to be. Although he finished third in Martinsville, it's only the second time he has finished inside the Top 5 this year.

His third-place finish in Daytona was the other, but other than that results have not looked great for the three-time champion.

The biggest disappointment for Logano was his 33rd-place finish in Darlington. However, he bounced back well from that and secured a brilliant third-place in Martinsville. Kevin Harvick described Logano’s quick turnaround from Darlington as a relief.

Speaking on his Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast, Harvick said, “No matter how many championships you’ve won or how many races you’ve won, when you have a race where you get lapped three times, you’re like, that’s tough.” Harvick got into the driver’s mindset, too. “Am I doing something wrong? Can I still do this? ”

Harvick expressed that those would be the questions one asks when a day goes as badly as Logano’s did in Darlington. Pointing to how important it is that Logano turned the switch back on in Martinsville.

“Being able to switch it into the next week and be able to dig down deep and have that finish at a racetrack, that's 14 straight top 10 finishes for him at Martinsville,” Harvick added, “They qualified up front and ran up front pretty much the whole day. That’s how you rebound from getting lapped three times.”

Chase format a problem for Logano?

After seven races, Joey Logano sits 12th in the leaderboard with 185 points. Despite being in the early stages of the season, it isn’t a good sign for Team Penske who would want to consider Logano their first driver based on his experience and three titles.

But currently, for Penske, it is Ryan Blaney who has been the true leader of the team, sitting in P2 in the championship with a race win to his name.

Much of Logano’s success came during the Playoff era, when the ‘Win and In’ system applied, and it was that very clause that would get him into championship contention. Just two top-five finishes in seven races is not a good look for someone of Logano’s stature.

Back in January, during Testing, Logano had made a few comments about the Chase format and how it would affect the championship. Logano is 12th in the championship, and ironically, he’d already predicted how hard it would be to win from there.

“Looking at it, I think if you’re 12th or so going into the playoffs, I don’t think you can win it from that far back. You’re going to be 70-plus points back, without knowing the real numbers, and you’re going to have to make that up against the best cars in 10 weeks. Boy, that’s going to be tough.”

Logano certainly will be backing himself to turn this around. With a week off, he will take this time to focus on what he could do to help his chances of making a push in the next stage of the season. While it seems difficult now, his aim will still be to win a fourth championship.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri