Logano has good news times two at Michigan

A year ago, Joey Logano was celebrating in Michigan's Victory Lane, and he felt like celebrating again Sunday afternoon following a third-place finish in the FireKeepers Casino 400.

It was to be expected after the No. 22 team finished 20th or worse in its previous five races.

"Feels great," Logano said afterward. "You have no idea how good this feels. Feels like a win, just to stop the bleeding. No secret, last month, month-and-a-half has been a struggle for us with just a lot of things going wrong during the races. This was an uneventful race for us.

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"Todd [Gordon, crew chief] was able to make some good calls there. A lot of times Todd makes calls, and it confuses me. I go, 'Why did you do that?' I never actually say it; I keep my mouth shut because I know it works out at the end. It did again."

Calling the effort outperforming the car, which he said was a 10th-place car, Logano certainly backed that up late in the going. Ahead of a restart with 15 laps to go, Logano was not positioned inside the top 10. But when another restart occurred with 10 laps to go, he had charged to sixth. Logano then lined up fourth on the race's final restart with five laps to go.

"Todd was able to put me in position to drive the heck out of the thing," Logano said. "Finally got a restart on the outside. I actually got three in a row finally at the end. Every other restart was on the bottom. I was just getting eaten up.

"Had a good restart, pass a whole bunch of cars, get a restart, pass a couple more, get a restart, it was a good thing for us. Eventually, put ourselves in position to almost win the race. I thought when we were fourth there that we might win this thing."

A win would have gone a long way. With his Richmond victory encumbered – meaning it doesn't count toward locking him into the playoffs – Logano is sitting dangerously close to not making the postseason. While his finish at Michigan bumped him to 10th in the standings, Logano is still near the bottom of the playoff grid.

But the good news is Logano feels the team is now out of its funk. His Ford still needs to be faster, though, and he knows he has plenty of points left to gain back.

"We got to figure out the package a little better," Logano said. "We still got work to do. But we did make our car better throughout the race. The last run before we put tires on, the last one, we were actually pretty good. We were able to race the 4 [Kevin Harvick], our teammate, Brad [Keselowski]. Just didn't have track position then, but we made our car better. That made me feel good.

"We were competitive at least. We just had to get up there. Then with the strategy and restarts, we were able to get there. Yeah, we still got work to do. Are we where we need to be? Absolutely not. We had tires, all that, and I still couldn't keep up on the last run. WE still got work to do to catch those guys. But we made a solid step the last couple weeks."

Adding to Logano's good mood was what he announced on Twitter after the race: