I don’t think most would consider Joey Logano a favorite to defend his NASCAR Cup Series championship from a year ago and go back-to-back this November in Phoenix. However, if you look a bit deeper, I think you can make a strong case that if he can get his No. 22 Ford back to the Championship 4 again this Fall, then watch out.

Logano came from 23rd at the start to finish fourth in Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at the Richmond (VA) Raceway. It was his second top four finish in the last three weeks and both couldn’t be more perfect to correlate to Phoenix either.

New Hampshire is a lot like Phoenix and Logano finished runner-up. Richmond is likely the next closest and here he was in the top five again at the end. He was 11th in the Phoenix spring race but 7th here this spring too, 2nd in Martinsville and 3rd in Gateway.

It’s no secret that the Ford’s are down in comparison to Chevrolet and Toyota. However, the heat on Sunday also masked the deficit that Ford has Logano said too.

“I think our weaknesses were hidden today by the lack of grip in the racetrack, mechanical grip seems to come in,” he said. “It’s hard to put the power down as it is. I think just where our weaknesses are were masked.”

In saying that, this season looks a lot like last for which Logano struggled mid-season but turned it on late.

This is the stretch to where he got hot again in scoring finishes of 6th, 4th, 6th, 3rd and 12th in the final five races to the regular season.

He’s finished 3rd, 3rd, 19th, 8th, 17th, 2nd, 35th, 4th over the last eight races and heading to a track in Michigan to where Ford has won 8 in-a-row. Then it’s to Indianapolis to where he was in the top five a year ago. Then it’s to Watkins Glen and after that Daytona which is a place he was runner-up this past February.

On Sunday, he rose all day in finishing 14th in Stage 1, 10th in Stage 2 and a top five in the end. He was 17th and 6th himself last year and seventh in the spring which led me more towards a Top-5 finish (+150) rather than an outright win on Sunday. He has six Top-7 results in his last seven Richmond tries, 10 in the last 13 at that.

“We weren’t that bad with the Shell-Pennzoil Mustang. Just a little bit off from the best cars,” he said. “Really couldn’t hang. If you put us at fifth, we could probably hang at fifth.

“Just qualifying as poorly as we did, slowly getting our way up there, a couple setbacks during the race, kind of made us hang around 7th and 10th place range for a little bit.”

Logano was in the top 10 on the final restart, but he got a great launch to get up to the top five at the finish.

“I knew we just had to get there. Paul (Wolfe) did a good job. Must have been a special set of tires,” he joked. “I don’t know. It fired off pretty good. Was able to roll the outside of two lanes there.

“What Denny screwed up and slid up, got me down the middle, maybe this is okay. Then I allowed the 8 to get back to the outside. We gave up a spot there.

“I saw him. I got excited. I was like, I’m also there. One more caution. It wasn’t fun (smiling).”