Joey Logano‘s win in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway on May 4 was a textbook Logano performance of recent years.
Logano and the No. 22 team have been far from the fastest team in the Cup Series since the advent of the Next Gen car in 2022. While Logano has managed a total of 10 wins over the past three-and-a-half seasons, the raw speed present in the No. 22 camp is noticeably less than that of Logano’s rivals at Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing.
But as Logano and the rest of the Cup field prepare to descend on Kansas Speedway for the AdventHealth 400, you can bet that Logano will be on the mind of plenty in the garage area after his win at Texas.
What makes Logano a feared driver and a perennial championship contender — at least in recent years — isn’t the speed in his cars. It’s his experience coupled with his and his team’s opportunism that truly make the No. 22 team a title threat every year.
That was on full display at Texas, where Logano qualified 27th before scratching and clawing his way through the field. When presented with the opportunity to race Michael McDowell, who was racing on very worn left-side tires, Logano took full advantage, passing McDowell for the race lead despite McDowell’s effort to block Logano all the way down on the apron of the backstretch.
In a very Logano-esque way, he took the checkered flag at Texas on an afternoon where nobody picked him to be a true threat.
Old fans have seen this happen many times before. To any new fans just getting into the sport, welcome to the quintessential Logano experience, where the three-time champion knows how to show up at just the right moment to capitalize and earn the big prize.
Over the next 15 regular-season races, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the No. 22 team pull a page out of the book of Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus by using the rest of the regular season as a testing ground for the 10-race postseason. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to drop off the face of the earth either; another trait that makes Logano such a big threat is that on any given weekend, he has the ability to dominate a race in the same way he can always sneak up on the competition.
Even though it’s an odd-numbered year (Logano has made the Championship 4 in every even-numbered year since it was introduced in 2014 and has never made it in an odd-numbered one), the playoff version of Logano is still likely to show up, regardless of how the rest of his regular season goes.
Saying that a driver who is currently on pace for roughly six top-10 finishes over the course of the 36-race season may sound preposterous to even the fans that have seen Logano work his magic over the years. But therein lies what makes Logano a great of modern NASCAR. His ability to adapt to a system that rewards winning above all else has given him three championships in three years when he wasn’t the fastest or most consistent driver in the field.
If you want a driver to lead a ton of laps, win stages and make Lee Petty jealous of their consistency, Logano isn’t your guy. But if you want a driver who can, above all else, win in pressure-packed situations where everything is on the line, Logano is a unanimous No. 1 pick in a hypothetical draft for Cup organizations.
Logano is a driver built perfectly for modern NASCAR. He’s unafraid of the consequences that come with doing anything to win, and when the pressure’s on, he only gets better.
Welcome to the Joey Logano experience again, everyone. It’s time to buckle up for what’s sure to be a rollercoaster of a ride.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.