Team Penske’s Joey Logano’s chase for a fourth NASCAR Cup Series title in the No. 22 Ford has been fraught with challenges, perhaps epitomized at the most recent race in Indianapolis at the Brickyard 400, where a rear flat, complete power loss, and a late crash ruined his hopes of a first career win on the 2.5-mile oval.

After 22 races, the reigning champion is 12th in the drivers standings and 10th in playoff points, although his spot in the postseason has long been secured thanks to his sole win of the year at Texas Motor Speedway in the Wurth 400.

With just five top 10 finishes and a disqualification in Talladega after finishing second, this season has been far from vintage Logano, but despite this, he remains upbeat about his Cup Series title hopes heading into the playoffs.

“We have some catching up to do, even when the playoffs reset, but we also know as long as you’re still in it, you got a chance, right?” the 35-year-old said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“As long as you’re still breathing, there’s an opportunity to win the championship. And I believe in this team so much that we can do that because we’ve done it multiple times. So at that point, you still feel confident in these situations.

“I feel like there’s a lot of positives right now around the 22 from a speed perspective. Dover has notoriously been our worst racetrack, and we were pretty good there. Like we weren’t great, we weren’t going to go up there and win the race, but we can run in the top six to 10. That’s way better than last year.

“In Indy, we had better speed than we had last year, and we were positioned to win that race if we can just keep air in a tire.

“When you look at it, zoomed out, and you look at just the results, you’d say, ‘It’s not looking good.’ But if you kind of can look a little bit deeper and seeing some of the positives from within the team, if you’re within the team, you can see some real positives going on right now, to where I feel okay about it.”

DON’T MISS

With four races to go until the playoffs begin in Darlington, there is still time for Logano to rack up some valuable points, starting with the Iowa Corn 350 on Sunday at Iowa Speedway. Just the second year, the Cup Series will take to the 0.875-mile oval, Logano will be hoping to repeat, or even build upon his sixth-place finish in Newton in 2024.

The Cup Series will then return to Watkins Glen for the second-to-last road course of the season, where Logano previously won a decade ago. It’s then on to Richmond, where Logano has won twice previously before the regular season closes out at Daytona, where he visited victory lane in 2015.