Yet another race has passed, and Joey Logano has once again failed to make an impression so far this Cup Series season. Although his finish at Michigan was far better than some of the #22 team’s other runs so far this season, it’s still far from being where the team wants to be to contend for the title, and as the season progresses without any hope of improvement, Logano seems to be blaming Ford now.

“It’s not too good,” Logano told Frontstretch of their performance on the track.

At Michigan, it was the Toyotas who ran away with it. Toyotas from three different organizations finished 1-2-3, with Denny Hamlin taking the win for JGR, Erik Jones second for Legacy Motor Club, and Bubba Wallace third for 23XI Racing. Even Chevrolet managed a contribution with Kyle Larson fourth, while Ford’s best finisher was Logano in seventh.

“We finished seventh, and we’re the best finishing Ford. It’s not too good. We got a little work to do,” Logano added.

Even the #22 team’s crew chief, Paul Wolfe, had recently mentioned that Ford currently does not carry the pace to face the competition at the top: “You just look at Ford as a whole right now, obviously it’s, you know, we don’t have the speed that the Toyotas have.”

And the issue is not just limited to Joey Logano or the rest of the #22 team. Ryan Blaney, who delivered Ford’s first victory of the season, is the only one in the points table who has a comparatively better shot at the title. The rest of the top spots in the top 16 are dominated by Chevy and Toyota, with the latter taking the top two spots, with Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin garnering a total of eight victories after Michigan. Meanwhile, Ford, with all of the drivers on the field, has won only a single race so far.

Moreover, the situation is a lot worse for Logano and the rest of the #22 crew, as the spots in the Chase are filling up, and NASCAR is no longer allowing the ‘win-and-in’ format, which was followed with the elimination playoffs up until last year. As it has gone so far, this might as well turn out to be one of his worst seasons in recent years.

Joey Logano might be on the course to one of his worst seasons two years after winning the title

When Joey Logano won the Cup title in the 2024 season, it wasn’t until the 19 round that he won his first race. Prior to that, he was extremely inconsistent, dropping out of the top 20 regularly, and at a certain point, he wasn’t even considered a contender for the championship. However, he moved to the playoffs with his Nashville victory, and all he had to do after that was win just three more races to clinch the title.

But with the Chase format reinstated for this season, the teams will have to focus a lot more on consistency rather than just race wins, and this just happens to be one of the reasons why the likes of Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick are still at the top of the table.

But that is not the case for Joey Logano. As of now, he sits in 17 place in the points table, right outside the cut for the Chase. More interestingly, he follows the Fords of Austin Cindric and Brad Keselowski.

Simply a single race win would not guarantee him a shot at the title. What the #22 team needs is for them to put forth stronger and more consistent performances. But bring in Ford, and that seems hard to achieve.