Joey Logano has had his ups and downs in a Cup career that began in 2008, but the way this season has started has the two-time series champion shaking his head.

“It’s definitely the toughest start of a season I’ve ever had,” Logano said this week during a break in tire testing at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Logano is 30th in the points heading into Sunday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET on Fox). Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney is the points leader.

Logano’s confounding start has seen him qualify on the front row in three of the first four races but finish 28th or worse three times.

“Some of it out of our control, some of it in our control,” he said of his woeful results. “But we just haven’t scored the points. Superspeedways, Atlanta cars were really fast. Vegas, we were mediocre. Last week (at Phoenix) was a struggle.”

Logano’s start is the worst for a former Cup champion since Tony Stewart was 36th in points after four races in 2015.

“You hope that it all just comes up in one lump and it’s over for the rest of the season,” Logano said of the problems he’s had this season. “I don’t know how the averages work out like that. But all we can do is stay focused on what we do, keep preparing, keep bringing fast race cars.

“This is the same team that has won two championships, a team that knows how to do it. (Crew chief) Paul (Wolfe) knows. We all know. We don’t really have to talk about it a whole bunch. I know the situation. We know who we are. We can fight out of it.”

While a win puts Logano back in a playoff spot, he has gone nearly a full year without a Cup victory. His last Cup triumph came on March 19, 2023, at Atlanta.

Logano’s best chance for a win this season came in the Daytona 500. He was running third with nine laps to go when Brad Keselowski got turned and clipped the left rear of Logano’s car, sending him into the wall. Logano finished 32nd after starting on the pole.

The following week at Atlanta, Logano qualified second but had to start at the rear and pass through pit road at the start after NASCAR discovered that his gloves were webbed and used as an aerodynamic enhancement during qualifying. Logano was fourth on the final lap of the second stage when his car drifted up the track and into Chris Buescher, putting them both in the wall and collecting Denny Hamlin. Logano finished 28th.

Logano won the pole at Las Vegas but failed to score points in the first stage despite the starting spot. He went on to finish ninth — just his fourth top 10 in the last 12 races, dating back to last year’s playoff race at Bristol.

Logano struggled at Phoenix last week. He was lapped late in the second stage and crashed in the final stage after contact from behind by John Hunter Nemechek. Logano finished 34th.

“I know that we’ll get out of it,” Logano said of his struggles. “I know it’s not easy and don’t get me wrong, it’s not fun. It’s freaking miserable, but it is what it is and you just kind of keep fighting and come out the other end and stick with the habits and keep going.”

2. The beginning of something big?

For all the behind-the-scene moments in the NASCAR Series “Full Speed” on Netflix, one of the most revealing parts came at the beginning of the fourth episode.

A voice off camera talks to Christopher Bell about which drivers were expected to reach the Round of 8 of the playoffs.

“I wasn’t in that plan, was I?” Bell said with a wry smile.

Told that he was “never in that plan,” Bell nodded and said: “Imagine that.”

For all the talk about his talent and climb up the ranks — Bell claimed a Truck title and won nearly a quarter of his starts in the two seasons he ran the full Xfinity season — Bell can be overlooked.

It can be easy when he once had Kyle Busch as a teammate and has Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs as teammates. But Bell is the only driver to have reached the Championship 4 each of the past two seasons. While he has yet to win a title, his statistics compare favorably to many current drivers through their first 150 Cups starts. Just check out the chart below.

A year ago, NBC Sports analyst Dale Jarrett said that Bell and Tyler Reddick “are your next superstars that are coming.”

Jarrett went on to say of Bell and Reddick: “These are the two names, in my opinion, that as long as they stay with their current teams right now, they’re in the best position (to succeed). It’s going to be hard to dominate in a respect, but they’re going to win more often than a lot of others out there.”

Bell’s win last weekend at Phoenix was noteworthy for how strong the team was. Bell posted the fastest average speed over 15, 20 and 25 consecutive laps in practice. He was just as fast in the race.

A slow pit stop dropped him to 10th after winning the second stage. A series of cautions early in the third stage created several pit strategies. Bell was 21st on a restart with about 90 laps left. He worked his way through the field and led the final 41 laps to win.

“I just hope,” Bell said of what the Phoenix win could mean, “that this gives a little bit more insight to the world the capability that the 20 team has. I feel like the last two years through the Next Gen era, myself and everyone inside of our team have seen glimpses of the potential but haven’t really been able to live it to fruition yet.

“I mean, I say this a lot, and the rest is up to us to make it happen, but I feel like this is just the beginning. Making the Final 4 and winning one or two races a year, that’s not our final goal. We don’t want to be a one- or two-win team a year. We want to be the championship contender year after year, multiple race wins year after year.”

3. Bigger picture for Chris Buescher

Chris Buescher holds the 16th and final playoff spot after four races. He’s scored 86 points, two more than Michael McDowell and Erik Jones, who are next behind him.

Buescher has scored only two stage points in the first four races of the season, but the RFK Racing driver isn’t concerned about that total.

“The way I see it, we’re not points racing this year,” Buescher said. “We’ve got to win races and we’re capable of winning races, and when we go do that, the rest will fall in line.

“I don’t think we’re a team that’s going to sit here and say we’re going to have to battle for this bubble spot of 15th, 16th, 17th for points to try to break into the playoffs. That’s not going to be our season and with that being the case, I’m not worried about the stage points and what we’ve been able to do there.

“I don’t like that it shows we haven’t been where we need to be, but, like we’ve talked, the speed has been there at times – not the right times all the time – and in three of the four races we’ve lost race cars. We may have finished Atlanta decent. Daytona we limped it back around, but we’ve got a full dumpster around here of race car parts and that ultimately shows why we don’t have any more points to show for it.

“We’ve got to clean up and find a little bit of luck here or there. We’ve got to make better decisions at certain times and just be smarter in ways and work harder, clean up. It’s going to be tricky, but I’m not going to read much into it right now.”

4. North Wilkesboro tire test

Daytona 500 winner William Byron, Joey Logano and Ty Gibbs took part in a Goodyear tire test this week on the repaved North Wilkesboro Speedway.

The test is in preparation for the May 19 All-Star Race at the historic speedway.

“The track is definitely a lot different with the repave, but I feel like they did a really great job,” Gibbs said.

Lap times were about two seconds faster than what teams ran in practice for last year’s All-Star Race on the old surface.

“It seemed like mash the throttle, mash the brake,” Byron said.

Logano estimated they ran in the 80 mph range in the corners and around 140 mph on the straightaways.

“They did a good job, there’s still some character, it’s still a unique shaped racetrack, which is all good,” Logano said of the repave. “There’s a pretty big bump down in Turn 1 … There’s a huge bump leaving (Turn) 4, which really kind of upsets the cars.

“I don’t think that’s bad. I’m OK with that. That’s something that made this racetrack so cool in the past, was that it had a lot of character, it was bumpy, you were forced to move around on it because it was challenging.”

5. Jimmie Johnson’s plan

The seven-time Cup champion was inducted this week into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Daytona Beach, Florida. It follows his induction in January into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The 48-year-old Johnson is among the youngest in those Hall of Fames, but he is the oldest to run a Cup race this season. Johnson, co-owner of Legacy Motor Club, is scheduled to compete in nine Cup races this year.

So, what does the future hold for Johnson in terms of driving?

“I’m personally open to probably a 15-race schedule but that would include sports car and vintage classic car racing and NASCAR,” Johnson said. “ … I’d love to diversify and be back in sports cars in LeMans or the Rolex 24 (at Daytona). I will drive some Extreme E races this year, and I’m really excited for that experience. It’s still fluid at this point. I am hopeful to have a great year behind the wheel and set up another fun year in ’25.”

Johnson missed the first two events in Extreme E due to a clash with the Daytona 500, he’ll compete in that series for Legacy Motor Club’s team.

The road racing series features eight teams. Each team has one male and one female driver. Extreme E competes in areas impacted by climate change to highlight global issues. The next race is scheduled July 13-14 in Europe.

Travis Pastrana drove in place of Johnson while Johnson was at Daytona. The team’s female driver is Gray Leadbetter.

The draw to Johnson with that series?

“I think there’s a lot of factors,” he said. “Racing internationally is something that I’ve had limited experience but love. The focus for sustainability and gender equality in Extreme E is really special for me, especially being a father of two daughters and to see my girls’ excitement to meet Gray Leadbetter, our female driver and to come to the races and watch her run. … And you can’t skip over the fact that I grew up on the dirt and I have not been back on the dirt really since probably ’97.”