Joey Logano has won three Cup Series championships. He knows how to close a season. So when his own crew chief admits to feeling more pressure at the tracks where Logano is supposed to dominate, something is clearly off at the No. 22 garage.

“I almost feel more pressure going to those races, especially with the position we’re in right now, than I did going to Chicago last week,” Paul Wolfe said on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio. “When you’re expected to perform or contend for the win, you don’t want to screw it up.”

The tracks Wolfe means are North Wilkesboro, Richmond, and Loudon. Short, flat ovals. Logano’s bread and butter. The kind of places where Ford’s aerodynamic weaknesses do not matter as much and where Logano’s aggressive, hard-braking style comes alive. With the regular season running out, those are the races keeping the No. 22 team afloat.

Here is where things stand. Nineteen races into the 2026 season, Logano has zero wins. He has just five top-10 finishes and three DNFs. His average finish is a dismal 20.3. Logano currently sits 18th in the standings, exactly 16 points behind the playoff cutline. The maddening part is that the car keeps showing up fast. The results do not continuously match.

At Phoenix, he won the pole, led 73 laps, and finished 31st after two separate wrecks caught him out. At Texas, a chain reaction on pit road, where he had no time to react, sent him straight into Cole Custer, ending in 37th place.

Talladega took him out in a massive pile-up. A tire failure at Watkins Glen left him limping to the finish line 15 laps down. At Darlington, he finished three laps down. Last week at Chicagoland, he started all the way back in 31st and could only salvage a 12th-place finish.

Yes, the Ford Mustang Dark Horse has real limitations at high-banked, high-speed tracks. Team Penske will tell you that. But that argument has a problem. His teammate, Ryan Blaney, drives the same car.

Ryan Blaney is third in the standings. 14 top-10s. Average finish of 11.1. He leads the entire Cup Series in green-flag passing. Same manufacturer. Same engine. Very different season.

The gap is not because of equipment, but perhaps what each team does with it. Blaney and crew chief Jonathan Hassler have found a setup that holds up across different track types and long runs. The No. 22 side keeps leaving points on the table at exactly the wrong moments. Analyst Andrew Kurland still believes Joey Logano can flip this around.

“Outside of Daytona and Indianapolis, I actually like this stretch for Joey Logano,” he said on PRNLive. “If he can string together a bunch of top-10s, that might be enough points to get him into the top 16.”

Wolfe is thinking the same way. He is not panicking, but he is not relaxed either.

“It’s about minimizing damage in the races where things can go wrong,” Wolfe said. “And then making sure we’re 100% executing when we show up at North Wilkesboro, Richmond, and Loudon.”

Sixteen points. That is the gap between Joey Logano and the final playoff spot. Small enough to close. Tight enough to lose sleep over. The tracks ahead suit him better than anything he has faced lately, and the No. 22 team knows this stretch is their season.