Joey Logano won at Bristol Motor Speedway on September 19, his 40th career Cup Series victory and his third win of 2026. The result moved him from seventh to third in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff standings, just 16 points behind leader Kyle Larson. Christopher Bell sits one point further back in fourth. Kansas Speedway is next, and crew chief Paul Wolfe has been direct about what the coming races require. In an interview with Cup Scene, Wolfe was asked whether the No. 22 team could win the championship.

“Absolutely. I think we’ve proven that,” he said. “Yes, we’re coming up to three tracks that probably aren’t our strongest and we wouldn’t pick to go to if we had to choose. But I think what we’ve shown the first three races of this round is that we’re capable of anything. I’m still optimistic that we can put together some solid performances on these intermediates. Are we going to have, you know, winning pace? I don’t know.”

The next three races are at 1.5-mile intermediate ovals: Kansas Speedway on September 27, Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 4, and the classic Charlotte Motor Speedway oval configuration following on October 11. Logano struggled at both intermediates in the spring.

A pre-race steering rack change dropped him to the rear at Kansas, where he finished 30th. At Las Vegas, he completed all 267 laps and still finished 15th.

Joey Logano has led 537 laps at Las Vegas across 25 career starts and won there as recently as September 2024. The 15th-place spring finish at the same track is a package issue, not a driver one.

Wolfe is not treating the spring data as final. NASCAR mandated splitter strut changes during the 2026 season to stop the front splitter from moving or deforming at speed. That change matters most at faster tracks, where aerodynamic stability links directly to lap time.

“I think, you know, there’s been some updates, you know, splitter updates and things to the rules since we’ve been on a lot of these mile-and-a-halves,” Wolfe said. “I think Indy’s, you know, the highest-speed track we’ve been on, and we were one of the fastest cars at the end of the race at Indy. So that gives me a little bit of optimism that we can go to these mile-and-a-halves and run in the top five.”

Joey Logano finished third in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July. Indianapolis is a 2.5-mile oval, not a 1.5-mile intermediate. Wolfe uses the result as evidence the car has moved on from where it was in the spring.

Logano had fallen to 20th in the standings before wins at North Wilkesboro and Richmond revived his season. He entered the Chase ninth with 2,035 points. Denny Hamlin, the regular-season champion, topped the field at 2,100, a 65-point gap. After Bristol, it stands at 16.

The Chase opener at Darlington Raceway set the tone, where Logano finished ninth after a 33rd-place spring result at the same track. At World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway the following week, he won the pole, won Stage 1, and led 96 laps. The race ran under short-track rules, not the intermediate package. He finished second in Stage 2 and came home third for 54 points. The team had a 60-point target, and late-race restarts kept them short.

Bristol was where the standings shifted. Joey Logano started on the pole, won Stage 1, led 93 laps, and made the decisive pass with seven laps remaining. He scored 73 points, built from a 40-point win plus stage earnings.

The math behind a 40-point requirement for Joey Logano

Wolfe put a number to what the team believes it needs from this point forward.

“Coming into it, we felt like, you know, we were going to need to score, you know, 40 points per race minimum was kind of what we had looked at,” he said. “I mean, if you look at where we started these first — you know, started this Chase, we were, what, 70-some back, I think you would say? And in three races, we’ve all but closed the gap on that.”

Forty points is not a winning result. The 2026 Chase sends 16 drivers through 10 races without mid-season eliminations, with points from finishing position and stage results building throughout. A win is worth 55 points, while a top-five plus stage points can approach that number without the victory.

After Bristol, Larson leads at 2,206, Hamlin is at 2,205, Joey Logano sits third at 2,190, and Bell is at 2,189. At Kansas, where Logano finished 30th in the spring, a 40-point weekend could put him in the lead. A bad result could push him outside the top three before Las Vegas arrives.

Wolfe was not saying the intermediates are no longer a concern. He was saying this is not a team approaching them in fear.