Joey Logano faces uphill battle in pursuit of fourth Cup championship

One playoff race down in the Round of 16, two more races to go before NASCAR starts weeding out the championship pretenders from the contenders.

The NASCAR Cup Series' postseason continues Sunday afternoon with the Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill., the opening round's second stop.

Elliott Sadler won the inaugural NASCAR outing in 1997, claiming the Xfinity Series race on a brutally hot summer day outside of St. Louis, when the track was called Gateway Motorsports Park.

Three years after its first Cup race, WWTR will hold Sunday's event that is anything other than "just another race."

It's a title-round showdown in a fairly short 300 miles and less than three hours.

Talk about a track's meteoric rise in stock car racing.

Relatively speaking to the other nine tracks in the championship hunt, WWTR is pretty much an unknown in terms of expectations.

The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway has only hosted seven races, but we know what it is -- an experience that almost every driver dislikes. But everything else from Bristol to Phoenix is a known commodity.

Ford drivers have done well at WWTR in its early existence: Joey Logano won the first race and Austin Cindric the most recent. Both Team Penske racers could use a repeat, checker-filled performance this weekend.

The defending Cup champ, Logano has hoisted the trophy in November three times, putting him in rare company that includes Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and Tony Stewart.

But the Darlington winner in 2022 stumbled last Sunday night in the Southern 500 and finished a mediocre 20th, never contending and only running in the top 10 during the cycle of pit stops.

"I think we're very close to where we need to be," assessed Logano. "I think our speed has gotten better. I think we're in a comparable place to where we were last year. ... But knowing these guys the way I know them, and being able to do it multiple times, I feel like we're in a good spot."

For Logano to advance to the Round of 12, he will have to bump a driver, and the best candidate appears to be the Down Under road-racing daredevil right in front of him -- Shane van Gisbergen.

SVG is Superman on road courses, but ovals are his kryptonite. And the kryptonite the next two weeks comes in the shapely, round form of WWTR and Bristol. The Trackhouse Racing hotshot only holds a three-point lead over Logano.

Chase Elliott (+9), Christopher Bell (+11) and Cindric (+12) all ride in front SVG, so there are opportunities for Logano to leapfrog the cut line.

Trailing Logano by five points, Richmond winner Austin Dillon (-8) is also in a position where he cannot afford a St. Louis slip-up Sunday.

Team Penske will be in Sunday's spotlight, and some in NASCAR feel that Logano, crew chief Paul Wolfe and the rest of the 22 team have the format figured out, especially after he was dismal most of last season, entered the playoffs 15th and won for the third time.

Some believe it's like the 22 has a secret playoff playbook hidden away in a safe like gold in Fort Knox. When it comes September, the Penske folks square up the tumblers, pluck it out and start thumbing their way to a title.

Spawned from the old Chase for the Nextel Cup, this championship simply isn't that easy to win.

Even in this 12-year-old format that could stand some serious tweaking.

--Field Level Media