NASCAR: Joey Logano Explains Why He's Felling 'Great' Heading Into Playoffs (Exclusive)

The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs begin on Sunday at Darlington Raceway. 16 drivers will battle for the Cup Series title, including Joey Logano who won it all in 2018. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Logano talked about why he feels confident he can be on top when the playoffs end. 

"We're feeling great," Logano exclusively told PopCulture. "Honestly, I feel probably better going into this year's playoffs than I've had in quite some time. So I feel like if you look at the last five or six races, we scored 40 more points than the next closest points-getter. And I look at that momentum that we're carrying into the playoffs, the way this team is executing races right now, it makes you pretty excited about what's on the horizon for us so we've just got to keep that going. Roger [Penske] always says you can't trip on your press clipping either, so we got to keep looking at the windshield and trying to find more speed in other great races, and get ourselves through each round."

Logano finished the regular season second in the standings behind regular-season champion Chase Elliott. The 32-year-old earned five stage wins, won two races, finished in the top-10 12 times, finished in the top-five seven times and tallied 457 laps led in 26 races. Logano revealed how he and his team were successful while driving the Next Gen car.

"Well, I think there's been a few things because this year's just been different than the other gen car," Logano said. "The Next Gen car has really changed up the game a lot and you have to be open-minded. You have to be willing to take the bumps and bruises along the way because it just hasn't gone as smooth as possible and when I look at our record of this year of top tens, top fives and things like that, I wouldn't say that that's second in points type of record in the past, wouldn't do that. That means everybody's going through the same challenges. No one can find consistency. So knowing those things and still able to be second in points, and really being able to actually find consistency in the last five or six weeks, that's what it's going to take to get through the playoffs and really what I feel sets us apart a little bit."

Logano has a chance to advance in the playoffs quickly since he already won at Darlington earlier this year. "When you've done it once, you can do it, but things change too as well," he said. "Things are going to be different when we get there. Track temp is one thing that's definitely going to be different. The cars have evolved a lot, even though it wasn't that long ago, still a lot of things have changed. And like we talked about earlier with the Next Gen car, the learning curve has been so quick so what we ran there last time probably would not be good enough to win again, so we have to be willing to step outside a little bit of our comfort zone and keep looking for gains."