Championship 4 encore? Logano, Bell, Chastain aiming for a return trip

CHARLOTTE -- Three of the four drivers who reached the championship round of last year's NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs are back in the postseason field this year, nine races away from making a return trip to Phoenix Raceway's finale with a shot at the title. All three had intriguing answers when asked to sum up the regular season that brought them to this point. "It's been up and down," said Joey Logano, the defending Cup Series champ. "Not ideal," said Christopher Bell, one of last year's playoff Cinderellas. "I don’t know if we have enough tape!" offered Ross Chastain, wondering out loud how long it might take to properly tell the tale. Logano, Bell and Chastain enter the playoff hunt with one win apiece, an output that's slotted them squarely and tightly midpack as the postseason opens with Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, USA, MRN, SiriusXM, NBC Sports App) at Darlington Raceway. Chase Elliott is the only Championship 4 qualifier from 2022 who did not reach playoff eligibility this season. MORE: Playoff standings | Weekend schedule: Darlington Logano was a two-time winner before entering last season's playoffs, and he carried a degree of swagger into the Phoenix finale, which he won from the pole to secure his second Cup Series crown. This year, he's tied for 11th place in the standings, just one point above the provisional elimination line among the 16 title-eligible drivers after riding the "up and down" wave he referenced. "I feel like we've been executing fairly good, most of the time," Logano said during Thursday's Cup Series Playoffs Media Day. "I don't think we have as much speed as we need most of the time, so I think that's kind of why you see where we're at. Now, we've had some races where we didn't score many points. That's why we finished where we did in the regular season, but like I say, it was just a really close battle all the way up to fifth or so in points. So obviously, we're not going in with as many playoff points as I'd like to have, but (we've) also been in the same exact position before and believe we won that one, so I feel OK about it." That mention called back to his first Cup Series title in 2018, when Logano entered the final race with the fewest wins among the Championship 4 field. His lone victory this year came at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the fifth race of the season, and his eight top fives have been offset by six finishes of 30th or worse. Now headed to race No. 27 of the 2023 campaign, Logano has a sense that his Team Penske No. 22 Ford will find another gear when it matters most. "No, I really feel like this team -- and all of Team Penske in general -- for years, we've kind of had that summer slump and then it comes to the end of the year and look out. They find a little something, and so, really hoping that's the same thing this year," Logano said. "I don't see why it wouldn't be. Seems like Team Penske, like I said, does a good job of bringing faster cars, but I think the 22 (team) in general does a really good job of handling pressure, and there's a lot of teams that are out there that don't handle the pressure the same way and embrace the pressure the way like we do, and I think that's what gives us a pretty good advantage." Bell led the Cup Series standings for three weeks in the spring, taking that perch after he prevailed in the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt-track race. But Bell's consistency from that point started to fray, and his next top-five finish arrived 17 races later -- third place in the next-to-last event of the regular season at Watkins Glen. "What is crazy is we finished fourth in the regular-season standings, which is amazing," Bell said. "If you would have told me from February 1st that you are going to finish fourth in the regular-season standings, I would be like 'yeah, I’ll take that.' But after living it, there were so many more opportunities on the table that got left there. That was very disappointing and encouraging at the same time, because I know that we have all of the pieces to not be underrated. Just have to put them all together, and if we do put them all together, I think greatness is ahead of us." MORE: Darlington 101 Bell enters the postseason with a new pit crew. Joe Gibbs Racing switched over-the-wall personnel between Bell's No. 20 team and the No. 54 group for Ty Gibbs, who did not qualify for the playoffs in his rookie season. Bell said he went to pit-stop practice earlier this week to get better acquainted with his new starting five and to "let them know I’m all in." He also heads into the final 10-race stretch knowing that his team is capable of clutch performances. In last year's playoffs, Bell advanced to the Championship 4 by converting two consecutive must-win scenarios in elimination races, a resilience that carried him to Phoenix. "When we were on the outside looking in, it would have been really easy to say that we are done, we are not going to put our full effort into this car, and they didn’t," Bell said. "Both times that we needed a win, they brought the best piece and a piece capable of doing it. Just very thankful to be able to drive for such a talented group of people.” Chastain's path this year has had plenty of twists and turns. His aggressive on-track style drew its share of scrutiny through the early portions of the regular season, but he also showed strength by leading the Cup Series standings for several weeks before the summer months approached. A Nashville Superspeedway victory near the end of June solidified his hold on a playoff berth, but that's Chastain's lone top-five result in the last 14 starts for the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing team. At Media Day, he lifted the cuffs at the wrists of his fire suit to signify that he didn't have any more tricks up his sleeve along the lines of his "Hail Melon" move from Martinsville Speedway in last year's penultimate race, but Chastain added that he's absorbed valuable lessons from the journey so far. "I think there’s a lot of things I could have done better. There’s a lot of things that I’m grateful that went the way they did, and I learned from all of it,' Chastain said. "So how do I think it went? I think it went exactly how it was supposed to. Now we have a shot for 10 weeks to go fight for this thing.”