MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Joey Logano is the outlier in this year’s championship race. He was never in the mix for this year’s Cup title, not until he used his bumper to move reigning champion Martin Truex Jr. out of his way to forcefully snag a spot in NASCAR’s version of the final four.

The move aggravated Truex, who vowed not to allow Logano to win the title . “He may have won the battle,” Truex fumed, “but he ain’t winning the damn war.”

A week later, Aric Almirola made a similar promise because he was rankled Logano refused to cut him any slack on the track.

Time and again, Logano finds himself in the center of a high-profile spat.

A decade of dealing with these silly little slights, being pushed around on and off the track, has taught Logano how to tune it out. He goes into Sunday’s winner-take-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway convinced he’s finally going to win his first Cup title.

Logano will race Truex, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch for the championship.

“I said 15 weeks ago we were an underdog and I would be surprised if we made it to the final four,” Logano said. “Now I feel like we are the favorites to win this thing. It’s crazy how things change.”

He feels as if he’s the favorite, but Logano is clearly the underdog of this group. His No. 22 Team Penske group was mediocre most of the season and an afterthought to the so-called Big Three of Busch, Harvick and Truex, a trio of former series champions who dominated the regular season.

But Logano mastered a path through the playoffs and could pull off the upset of his career.

It would be vindication for the driver tagged as NASCAR’s next superstar by Hall of Famer Mark Martin when Logano was just a teen waiting to turn 18 and be eligible to race at NASCAR’s national level. He was nicknamed “Sliced Bread,” because he was allegedly “the best thing since,” and the expectations were enormous by the time he made his debut.

Logano is by nature happy-go-lucky, and when he made it to the big leagues, his parents traveled the circuit with him. That became a bone of contention among Logano’s peers, who resented his clean path into NASCAR.