Joey Logano knows what it takes to win a NASCAR Cup Series championship. He did it in 2018. He knows what it takes to get to the Championship 4. He’s done it three times (2014, 2016, 2018).

So, as the Team Penske driver enters the Round of 12 with two third place runs in three first round races to go along with eight top 10’s out of his No. 22 Ford in the last 10 races overall, he has to feel good about his chances of hoisting a second championship trophy in three years this November.

“I think we’re there,” Logano told me last week. “Our pit crew is firing on all eight right now. They’re very fast. Paul (Wolfe) and I are working together better than ever.

“As we get to know each other better and better, we’re all working on each other individually to get better. We’re working on a team to be better.”

Logano, notes that they had to figure out how to race during this pandemic. Before the pandemic, Team Penske swapped all three Cup teams’ personnel. The only thing that remained the same for a car was the driver, the spotter and the number. Everything else around it changed.

So, in the first four points paying races, we didn’t have the rules that we have today. We had practice, multiple rounds of them each weekend. We had qualifying. We had time to do normal conditions.

Logano, won half of the races then. Following his Phoenix win, which oh by the way is the season finale this year, is when the chaos started.

We have no practice anymore. No qualifying to set the lineups each race either. So, for Penske and Logano and his new crew chief Paul Wolfe, they had to learn each other on the fly. It cost them performance.

Logano went from the resumption at Darlington on May 17 to to Kentucky on July 12 with just one top five and only five top 10’s in 13 races. He had two top fives, both of which being wins, in the first four races by comparison.

“I think we’ve got to figure out how to race during COVID-19,” Logano continued. “This whole pandemic has kind of changed the game for everybody. It was a little more challenging for us to figure out for whatever reasons. I feel like we’ve overcome a lot of those hurdles at that point and put us in a position again to have speed and capitalize.”

Boy has he ever. Starting at the Texas Motor Speedway on July 19, Logano has scored five top five finishes and nine top 10’s in 12 starts. He has as many top fives during this span as he had top 10’s in one more race before.

“It’s important for sure,” Logano said on keeping this wave of momentum now. “Momentum is confidence and I feel like we’re pretty close to where we were at the beginning of the year. I feel good about that.

“We’re very confident as a race team right now. A lot of that is how much we’ve grown over the last few months.

“I’ve said this a few times to my guys in that when we won the championship in 2018, I remember telling my wife about a few weeks before the playoffs started that ‘there aint no way we get through the second round of this thing. We’re not fast enough.’ Next thing you know, a little bit of speed popped up and the next think you know I have this trophy sitting behind me (Cup championship). That’s just how quickly that happens.

“In the back of my mind, you always have a shot no matter what. That and now proving that we actually have the speed the last couple of months and shown that we’re capable of winning makes us feel pretty good about where we’re at.”

He has plenty of reason to like his chances this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway too. Logano is the now two-time defending winner of the Pennzoil 400 as he’s won the last two spring races there. He and teammate Brad Keselowski have won four of the past seven races at the 1.5-mile track overall.

And Logano is statistically-speaking best in class at Las Vegas. The 2017 Cup champion boasts the best average starting position (8.9) and best average finishing position (8.5) in the field. And his average running position is also tops among the competition at 9.162.

Logano has six top-five and 10 top-10 finishes – only Kevin Harvick (10 top 10s and seven top fives) has more. And a very telling statistic, Logano has never suffered a DNF in 14 starts.

“I don’t know, honestly it’s just one of those race tracks that I think early in my career, I think one of my first top 10’s was here when really I didn’t run well anywhere,” Logano said of his success at Vegas. “There’s something about Vegas that kind of clicks with me right off the bat. Our average finish and our consistency has been here for a long, long time. That’s a great thing. Something about it just fits my style. You can move around. It’s fast. You have two corners that are completely different. It’s bumpy. If you look at Team Penske as a whole, obviously Brad (Keselowski) has been very good here. The driver pairings have been a pretty good match for us.”

He’s not finished worse than 10th in his last nine Vegas starts overall and is entering the weekend hot with eight top 10 finishes in his last 10 starts on the season too.