Joey Logano is a three-time Cup Series champion who has won 35 races, a Daytona 500, and has had one of the best career trajectories at Team Penske. None of that is in question by anyone. What is in dispute right now is why a driver of that caliber is finishing 39th at Talladega, 37th at Texas, and going down laps down on pure speed at Darlington. Kevin Harvick went on his Happy Hour podcast with Mike Joy and Clint Bowyer and gave the most surprised reaction anyone at that level has offered.

“When you look at the Fords and everything, for the most part, it’s been Ryan Blaney we look at for speed, and then we look at Joey Logano. I never would have thought of a day where you go to Darlington and see Joey Logano run three times as hard as he does to get a lap.”

The 2026 Jack Link’s 500 did not go well for Logano at Talladega when a leader crashed into the wall at nearly 200 mph on Lap 115. This gave way to a huge 26-car pileup in a cloud of smoke. Logano’s No. 22 Ford was swept up in it, sustained heavy damage that ended his day, and left him with a disappointing 39th-place finish.

That four-race stretch does look ugly on paper, but it’s worse when you dig deep.

Darlington in March had no single moment to point to. No crash or parts failure. The car simply could not run inside the top 30 in speed. Joey Logano started 29th and went backwards. At some point mid-race, he got on the radio and said what he actually thought the balance was drivable, but the car was “freaking slow.”

He finished 33rd, multiple laps down to the leaders, running as hard as he could with nothing to show for it. Then, as discussed by Kevin, Talladega was the next one. Then, in Texas, the car was driving fine in clean air, but not so much in traffic. Every time Logano ran close behind another car, the front-end lost downforce, the nose wouldn’t turn, and the car pushed straight up toward the wall. Eventually, it made contact, bent the right-rear toe link, and that was the end of it. Thirty-seventh was the result he got out of it.

Then Watkins Glen, he actually looked like it could go his way. Qualified sixth, had good pace. On Lap 42, hard downshifting into the chicane broke the sequential gearbox and stuck it permanently in third gear. The crew worked on it in the pit lane for 15 laps. He went back out to salvage whatever points he could. He managed thirty-eighth.

After Talladega, standing in the garage, he told the media it was pick your poison right now, either you save fuel and pack together, or someone hits someone, and it takes out half the field. The frustration is there, and it’s been piling up over four completely different types of failure. Slow car, big wreck, handling collapse, mechanical breakdown. Something different every week, same result every time.

Harvick admitted Joey Logano had some decent runs. Martinsville was okay, Bristol was okay, but none of the Penske cars have been dominant. No one from that camp has led 100 laps and walked away with a win.

“They’ve had some cars that run good from the Penske camp, but they really haven’t had any dominant race cars.”

Harvick meant to point to Bristol and Martinsville as examples of Logano showing some life. But, those were more of good results than pace in the car. Logano finished seventh at Bristol and third at Martinsville, yet he didn’t lead a lap in either race while Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and other frontrunners controlled the whole action.

That’s been the story for Team Penske all season. Ryan Blaney has one win, but hasn’t dominated. Austin Cindric is 17th in points without a win. More than halfway through the year, the strongest Ford performances have arguably come from RFK Racing, not Penske.

And the small signs of life showing up from the Ford side right now are coming from RFK Racing. Not Penske. Bowyer said it flat out. Joey Logano is 18th in points. No win. Nothing locked in. The season is more than halfway done.

Why Harvick’s the One Talking About Joey Logano’s- Next Gen Ford Problem?

Harvick didn’t form an opinion from the broadcast booth. He drove this car. The No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Stewart-Haas Racing, 2022 and 2023, right through the first two years of the Next-Gen era.

His results were solid by most standards. He broke a 65-race winless drought in 2022 with back-to-back wins at Michigan and Richmond, made the playoffs both seasons, and went out with 14 top-tens in his final year. But he spent that whole time telling anyone who would listen that the car felt like nothing he had driven before.

“I think the Ford is basically what I drove when I was in the Gen 7 car with Fords, and it just, it doesn’t turn, it doesn’t do well in traffic.”

The old NASCAR cars used a solid rear axle. Drivers could slide the back end out, manage the grip loss progressively, and rotate the car through corners using the throttle. The Next-Gen car replaced all of that with independent rear suspension. The feel is completely binary; either it grips, or it doesn’t. There is no warning. Veterans who had spent 15 years reading that progressive slide built their entire driving instinct around it, and then suddenly it was gone.

The wheels changed, too. The old 15-inch wheels had tall, flexible tyre sidewalls that absorbed bumps and banking changes before they reached the chassis. The 18-inch wheels with low-profile slicks transfer everything directly. And the five-speed sequential gearbox mounted in the rear, not the middle, forces drivers to downshift in the middle of oval corners to stay in the power band, which was simply not a thing in any previous NASCAR car. Harvick said it killed the natural corner rhythm he had spent a career developing.

Ford’s version of all this is worse than Chevrolet’s. The Mustang Dark Horse has a narrow aerodynamic window if the setup is off by a small margin, the front-end loses grip entirely. In traffic, it amplifies. Ford drivers have to lift off the throttle early on into corners and brake sooner, which means they’re losing ground to Toyotas and Chevrolets on the same track with every single lap.

On the podcast, Harvick said this plainly: the Ford body right now is the same one he drove. The rest of the field has moved. Ford hasn’t. A new body is coming for 2027.

The manufacturer confirmed the Mustang Dark Horse SC will debut in the 2027 Daytona 500, replacing the body Ford teams have been running since 2024. This has happened after persistent complaints about the car’s aerodynamic shortcomings, particularly in traffic and through the corners, as Harvick already said.

The new SC body gets larger hood vents, revised airflow channels under the hood, a reshaped grille, and reworked front-end geometry aimed at giving drivers a more stable, predictable car. Just as important, Ford says the redesign should give teams a wider setup window, making the car less sensitive to ride-height changes that have frustrated drivers like Joey Logano.

The Mustang Dark Horse SC was first unveiled in Detroit alongside Ryan Blaney before making a public appearance at Talladega with Joey Logano, and it will be rolled out across Team Penske, RFK Racing, and Front Row Motorsports when it hits the track in 2027. Until then, Logano is driving the same car Harvick drove, and even Harvick said it doesn’t turn.