Joey Logano Won the Championship Format in Front of Him
The 2024 Cup Series champ was the worst champ of the Playoff era — on paper. But he won when he needed to, outlasting a stacked field for the title.
"I love the playoffs, I love it man," Joey Logano said after Sunday’s Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix.
And with good cause.
After holding off teammate Ryan Blaney over the closing laps to win the race — and the 2024 series title — Logano joined an exclusive club, becoming the 10th driver in NASCAR history to win at least three career championships. He also became the first to win three titles entirely in the era of knockout-style playoffs, mastering the art of advancing through and winning the races he needed.
You may love the format or, more likely, hate it. But it’s undeniable that Logano is the undisputed king of it.
Playoff critics will point to the fact that Logano was hardly the best driver of the 2024 season. Even after winning three races during the playoffs, including Sunday’s clincher, he still ranked just eighth in my rolling driver ratings, and 12th in the non-playoff point standings coming out of the race. (Kyle Larson was No. 1 by either accounting system.) According to both my Adjusted Points+ Index metric (which scales a driver’s per-race performance relative to a Cup Series average of 100) and average Driver Rating, Logano was the worst champion of the entire Playoff Era:
(That may not be surprising, considering that Logano was 15th in the points after the regular season and only advanced from the Round of 12 after Alex Bowman was disqualified by failing a post-race inspection.)
And yet, Logano also did what he has consistently done in each of his championship runs over the years. For at least one race per round, he elevated his performance well beyond his usual average from the regular season — and nobody elevates their driving more in the championship race itself.
Once again going back to 2014 and the dawn of the current format, Logano owns each of the three biggest increases in Driver Rating (relative to the regular season) by a champion driver during the playoff finale:
In the two most recent of those title races, it helped Logano immensely that the championship came down to a track in Phoenix where he is one of the best to ever drive. With his fourth victory there on Sunday, Logano is the winningest active driver at Phoenix Raceway. And between Logano and teammate Ryan Blaney (who finished second in the running on Sunday), their employer, Roger Penske, has also owned each of the past three Cup champions — all crowned at Phoenix.
But the first of those Logano championships was won at Homestead-Miami Speedway, a finale site that is generally regarded more highly than Phoenix (at least for the purpose of crowning a champion in a fair and exciting way). Clearly, Logano is also one of the best pressure drivers of his generation, regardless of whether the clinching race is run at one of his favorite tracks or not.
Of course, this still was not a widely popular title victory. Logano is never going to win the Most Popular Driver award, as most fans still remember him as a bratty up-and-comer (nicknamed “Sliced Bread”) or as a two-faced bully who wrecked guys like Matt Kenseth for no reason. Becoming the face of an unpopular playoff format is just the icing on the cake of Joey hate — even if Logano himself has matured as a driver and made himself a lot less unlikeable over time.
But there’s an old college football saying that goes: “You can only play the teams in front of you.” Similarly, Logano can only win championships within the format in front of him. Every other driver was up against the same system, and they had plenty of chances to kill Logano’s title run before it even came down to a single race at Phoenix with everything on the line.
They didn’t — and he ended up beating them every time he needed to. Now, Logano has added another title to what is a rapidly growing legacy as one of NASCAR’s all-time greats. No, that wouldn’t have been true under the old season-long points system, which would have created its own heroes and storylines on Sunday. But that method doesn’t crown a champ anymore — and under the one that does, Logano is the ultimate closer. It’s time we embrace him as the king of NASCAR's postseason era.
Filed under: NASCAR
Logano is criminally underrated as a driver because people dislike him. He won the title in the last year of the high horsepower package where the driver supposedly had more influence. He won the title in the first year of the NextGen car. Now he’s won his third title.
His season was only bad when looking at historic metrics like season long average finish. The new format is about winning. He won more playoff races than anybody else. He won more races in the 2nd half of the season than anybody else. He even had the 2nd most wins if you insist on looking at the whole season.
He also won the All Star race. He would have won the first Richmond race if NASCAR had penalized Hamlin for jumping the final restart and he would have won the 2nd Richmond race if Dillon didn’t go on his final turn wreck-everybody rampage.
Winning is king these days (because people hated drivers winning championships with boring “good points day” finishes) and Logano is a winner.