DOVER, Del. -- Forget about the "big one" -- Joey Logano's eternal highlight-reel multiple flip through Dover International Speedway's Turns 3 and 4 a year ago in the 2009 Chase.

Logano had already rebounded from that with a top-10 run last spring at Dover, and Sunday in the AAA 400 he gave it an exclamation point as the second-year driver led three Joe Gibbs Racing cars in the top 10, with his third-place finish.

“

I keep telling everybody we just need to work on consistently being up here. That's what my teammates are able to do and that's why they're in the Chase right now and why we're not in the Chase.

”

-- JOEY LOGANO

"I'm just trying to catch my breath -- that was a long race," Logano said. "I felt like we did a good job working our way up there and made good adjustments on this race car. Zippy [crew chief Greg Zipadelli] did a good job. I feel like we were

close to winning that thing -- we came up a little bit short, but either way it's better than last year.

"Obviously, it's a proud day to be the best JGR car [Sunday] when we all finished in the top 10. I think it's cool that we're able to run up front and everybody did a good job and man, I was excited about that.

"But this is one of my better race tracks and I came in here expecting to run good, and I was going to be disappointed if we didn't run good."

Indeed, Logano's average finish in eight career starts in both the Nationwide and Cup series at Dover is 10.7. He finished second to teammate Kyle Busch in Saturday's Nationwide event.

But Sunday was a bigger deal, considering it was only the third time this season -- but the second in the past three races -- that all three JGR cars finished in the top 10. And the bigger implications weren't lost on Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin, who's won six times this season, but isn't against accepting all the help he can get.

Hamlin had confessed before the weekend that Dover was perhaps his biggest obstacle to continuing to lead the Chase, and despite finishing ninth to maintain a 35-point cushion, he said he still hadn't figured the place out.

"I'd like to acquire [Logano's] feel -- he's got a great feel for this race track," Hamlin said. "It's something that we can learn."

But Dover's not the only place where Logano's potential excellence can help either Hamlin or Busch, who finished sixth Sunday.

"I like it when Joey runs good because that's more information that we can tap into for our [No.] 11 team," Hamlin said. "When the No. 20 team [Logano] doesn't run good or the No. 18 team [Busch] doesn't run good, it does not help us one bit.

"We need all of our cars running competitively for that information exchange to work right. So the better that No. 20 runs -- and hopefully if he keeps that momentum up, keeps running good -- then he's going to be a guy that's hopefully in between us Chasers when I need him for a point or two. I think that's going to be important."

Logano, who has four top-five and 11 top-10 finishes this season, is all for it.

"I keep telling everybody we just need to work on consistently being up here," Logano said of running up front. "That's what my teammates are able to do and that's why they're in the Chase right now and why we're not in the Chase.

"We have the top-five and top-10 finishes to be in it, we're just not consistent -- we've got a lot of minus-25s. We wrecked last week, we finished third this week, we were fourth in Richmond. We're close -- we just need to find some consistency, man. We really need to figure out how we can be up here every week, then we can challenge for wins. We need to be up here consistently -- so we have to somehow figure out how we can do this week in and week out."

• Press Pass: Joey Logano