“Nothing less than that”: Joey Logano focused on winning third NASCAR championship after Nashville win

Joey Logano has unfurled his desire to clinch his third Cup Series championship this season. The #22 Ford Mustang driver triumphed in the recently wrapped Ally 400 race and has met the criteria for entering the playoffs.

Before mastering fuel conservation at the Nashville Superspeedway and claiming his maiden win this season, Logano had collected two top-5s and five top-10s from 18 race weekends. The Team Penske driver set the fastest qualifying lap three times but couldn't convert the same into a race win.

However, as chaos followed on the 1.33-mile oval and the 300-lap race went into five overtimes extending to 331 laps, Joey Logano snapped his 49-race winless streak to emerge as the winner.

Earlier, the Team Penske driver's playoff odds were hanging by a thread as he lingered near the cutline. Nonetheless, he has met the criteria of sealing a race win to be eligible for playoffs and has climbed to 9th place in the playoff picture.

Post his maiden win, Joey Logano weighed on his focus to rake in his third Cup title.

"My biggest fear is to go into these last 10 races and not have a chance to win a championship. It just eats me up and there's no way to avoid that feeling because I care so much and set my goal every year to win the championship and nothing less than that," Logano said via SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on X.

"The last thing you want is to not even make the playoffs. It would just feel like a real failure of a year. Now that we have a chance, we've gotta work on our chances because our playoff point scenario is not great by no means," he added.

Joey Logano reveals that he'll be able to "sleep a little bit" after emerging above the playoff threshold

Joey Logano started his run from 26th place and couldn't bank any playoff points in the two stages. However, the scenario changed during the final stage as a collision between Austin Cindric and Noah Gragson on Lap 299 brought the first overtime into the picture.

It became tough for the pack to run for long without wrecking into each other and thus, it took five overtimes before the #22 Ford finally wrapped up the weekend. Logano's odds of claiming a win were slim even during the restarts but after frontrunners like Kyle Larson, Chase Briscoe, Ross Chastain, and Kyle Busch, either crashed out or succumbed to fuel exhaustion, the things changed.

As a result, Joey Logano's path became clear and he kept climbing the ranks. His ride was low on fuel but the Connecticut native managed to keep running until the checkered flag dropped and churned 110 laps on a single fuel tank.

After lifting a huge "pressure" off his chest, Logano shared his thoughts on being a bit relieved from the playoff tension.

"You think about this playoff scenario that we were in, being on that cut-off spot, man, it sucks. It’s not fun. That pressure is real, and you don’t sleep good. You’re constantly thinking about it. It’s nice to be able to get this win to where you can take the next seven weeks to be able to — not take a breather but be able to at least sleep a little bit and start thinking about the playoffs as much as the next few races," the #22 driver said via NASCAR.

Joey Logano will be next seen at the Grant Park 165, NASCAR's second visit to the Chicago Street Race since the first race last year.