- Speed without results: Joey Logano’s 2026 season isn’t adding up.
- Solid stats, no wins, what’s holding back the No. 22?
- Veteran curse or Penske problem? Logano’s season raises bigger questions.
For a driver who built a career on closing races with ruthless efficiency, Joey Logano’s 2026 season has panned out like a slow-burning contradiction. There’s something oddly out of place about seeing the three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion’s name buried in the mid-pack on a Sunday evening.
Not wrecked out, not invisible, just… there. While the Toyotas continue their hot streak, stringing together multiple wins, and Chevrolet’s playing catch-up, the Fords haven’t been as successful. Logano, in particular, has been trailing for that matter since his last win at Texas last year. Which begs the question: Is the No. 22 driver the latest victim of NASCAR’s veteran curse, or is it just a Penske problem?
A closer look at Joey Logano’s Penske predicament
First off, calling it a “slump” would be an overstatement. A Slump usually comes with obvious red flags, such as missed setups, poor qualifying runs, or repeated race-ending mistakes. On the contrary, Logano’s 2026 campaign hasn’t quite followed that script. If anything, it’s been uneven rather than outright poor.
In fact, the numbers tell a more nuanced story. Through the first 10 races of the season, the veteran sits 15th in the standings with 234 points, still hovering around the playoff cutline. However, he has yet to notch his first win.
But the story runs deeper. As of now, Logano has two top-five finishes, three top-10s, a pole, and 114 laps led. However, his average start of 14.5 points indicates solid qualifying pace, but his average finish of 19.4 paints a different picture altogether.
Take individual races, and the inconsistency becomes clearer. He opened strong with a third-place finish in the Daytona 500 and followed it up with another P3 performance at Martinsville Speedway. However, those highs have been offset by heavy drops.
In fact, between Daytona and Martinsville, he endured a dismal stretch – a 31st finish at Phoenix, P33 at Darlington, with a best finish of P15 at COTA and Las Vegas.
Darlington, in particular, was disastrous for the 35-year-old. He finished 33rd, three laps down, with no crash or mechanical failure to explain it. His teammate, Ryan Blaney, however, despite the pit crew issue, has notched up a win and sits third with 344 points.
As for Austin Cindric and the No. 2 team, they stumbled out of the gate, opening the season with four straight finishes of 26th or worse. Josh Berry of Wood Brothers Racing, operating under the Penske alliance, is on the same trajectory, though there have been flashes of speed.
The veteran curse?
Now, the Penske’s underwhelming runs have obviously been acknowledged, even by Logano, his boss, Roger Penske.
Reflecting on the worrying trend, Team Penske’s competition director, Travis Geisler, after Martinsville, told NASCAR.com, “It was a good, solid day. It was really nice to have everybody in the top 10. It’s always good to go into an off week with just a stable, good, solid week.”
“I think there’s a few areas that obviously we’re not where we want to be yet, a couple things we need to improve and focus on. Is it just the result, or is it actually the process that’s not getting you the result? You know, sometimes in racing,” he added.
“But you kind of look at those, the style of track where we struggle a little bit. Vegas was certainly a place where we weren’t as strong as we wanted to be. So you look at that with Kansas coming up and a couple of those races and you focus on your weaknesses, really.”
His recent finishes of P30 and P37 at Kansas and Talladega add to the worry. Coming to the veteran curse, ever since the introduction of the Next Gen platform, veteran racers like Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, etc., have struggled, with Denny Hamlin being the exception.
Two-time champion, Busch, is a perfect example of the superstition. Since his first season with Richard Childress Racing in 2023, he has been riding a disastrous slump, crossing the 100-race mark. Keselowski, too, hasn’t won a race since 2024 at Darlington.
Although Logano strung up four-race winning streaks in 2022 and 2024, both championship years, the rest of those seasons saw the veteran win once, both in 2023 and 2025.
Recently, Hamlin opened up about the struggles seasoned drivers face with the Gen 7 parity. As teams have spent more time with the car, performance gaps have narrowed. According to industry observations, engineers are now operating close to the car’s performance ceiling, reducing mistakes and compressing the field.
To say the least, that dynamic hasn’t played to Logano’s strengths. He’s traditionally one of the best closers in the field, aggressive on restarts, and willing to take risks late. But in a field where track position is harder to gain and harder to lose, those margins shrink.
And then there’s the mental side. Logano has always thrived on momentum, meaning one win usually leads to more, but without that first breakthrough, 2026 has felt like a string of near-misses. Now, with the series heading to Texas Motor Speedway, where he won in 2025, this week, there’s at least a realistic chance to reset.
