Joey Logano is the master of even years after winning the NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2018 and 2022, he added a third title on Sunday after holding off Team Penske colleague and defending champion Ryan Blaney at Phoenix Raceway.
Logano’s weekend started rather poorly when he failed pre-qualifying inspection twice, resulting in his car chief being ejected and having to be assigned his pit stall by NASCAR. Despite this, he qualified second, best of the four Championship Round contenders and ahead of William Byron, Tyler Reddick, and Blaney.
Already a three-time winner at Phoenix, Logano was quick to establish himself as the top driver of the quartet by leading 107 of 312 laps and winning Stage 1. Only Christopher Bell, who had been eliminated from the playoffs after the penultimate round, led more laps.
Blaney kept pace and won Stage 2, but the lead throughout the third and final segment was split between Byron and Bell. The final caution for Zane Smith’s crash on Lap 251 culminated in a 53-lap run to the finish in which Logano led every lap.
Blaney tried to chase down Logano, but a poor restart forced him to work his way past Bell, Byron, and Kyle Larson. By the time he caught Logano, he did not have enough speed in his car to complete the pass.
“Just didn’t quite get there,” Blaney explained. “Obviously you want to win, and we had a shot. I just couldn’t really do much. When I got there, coming from that far back, I burned everything I had off of it, things like that.
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“I was trying to pass Joey, it took me a long time to pass a lot of guys today. Joey is one of the best ever I feel like, so he did an amazing job, didn’t make any mistakes in the closing laps when I was catching him.
“He did a great job because he’s a great race car driver and did everything he needed to do to win. It’s hard for me to say if it’s anybody else, would it have been a different outcome. I don’t know. There was only one guy, and it was that outcome.”
Logano is the tenth driver to win at least three Cup Series championships, capping off a year that saw him claim four race victories, the others at Nashville, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.
Team owner Roger Penske also notched his third consecutive Cup title and fifth overall. He is the first car owner to win three straight Bill France Cups since Rick Hendrick’s five in a row with Jimmie Johnson from 2006 to 2010, and the third overall alongside Junior Johnson who claimed the 1976 through 1978 titles with Cale Yarborough; Hendrick also won four straight between 1995 and 1998 with Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte.
While missing out on the NTT IndyCar Series championship, Penske enjoyed a fruitful 2024 that included winning the Indianapolis 500, the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar GTP Championship, and the FIA World Endurance Hypercar Championship. He described losing the IndyCar title as “disappointing” since it is his main priority as the series head, but he still called 2024 “if not the best, one of the best” years of his organisation’s existence.
“(Chip) Ganassi, you have to give him credit. He continues to put up great numbers with his guys. I told him, ‘Come on back to NASCAR, it’s gotten easier,'” Penske remarked. Ganassi used to field a NASCAR programme before selling it in 2022 to Trackhouse Racing.
Logano’s title, playoffs scrutinised
While winning a championship is momentous in any sport, various fans and former drivers were rather bitter about Logano’s title. Since its inception in 2004 and the creation of the current format in 2014, the NASCAR playoffs have been a contentious method of determining a champion compared to the season-long formats used by other motorsports, and many felt this was too egregious.
Logano had been eliminated from the playoffs after the Round of 12, but was allowed back in when Alex Bowman was disqualified from the Charlotte race after failing inspection. Although he earned his spot in the Championship Round by winning at Las Vegas and had a legitimately impressive final four races, they paled in comparison to the rest of his performance throughout 2024.
2024 was Logano’s worst season statistically since joining Team Penske in 2013. He only had thirteen top-10 finishes, his fewest since his 12 in 2012, and only seven top-5s, his lowest since he had just two that same year. His stats in these categories along with his average finish of 17.1 are the worst by any champion in Cup Series history, while his 414 laps led are the second fewest by a champion in the modern era.
The playoffs had already drawn intense scrutiny following the Round of 8 elimination race at Martinsville, where Byron was placed in the Championship Round over Bell due to a controversial penalty on the latter and both drivers’ allies were penalised for team orders. For some, Logano’s title was the last straw.
Brad Keselowski, Logano’s former Penske colleague, acknowledged that Logano earned the title under the rules set by the playoff system but added it seems inappropriate for the premier level of stock car racing. Cole Pearn, the former crew chief for pole winner and newly retired Martin Truex Jr., opined retaining the multi-round playoffs and having race winners advance to the next round, but that the remaining playoff spots be filled based on year-long performance rather than in each round.
Amidst the increasing criticism, NASCAR remains adamant about maintaining some semblance of a playoff but is open to changing it to some degree. On Tuesday, the Sports Business Journal reported NASCAR is considering modifying the format for 2025 before a potential “complete overhaul” in 2026. Proposals include allowing the regular season champion to be guaranteed spots in the later rounds of the playoffs (similar to the use of first-round byes for the best teams in major American ball leagues), increasing the number of Championship Round drivers, and expanding the final round to include more races.
In the meantime, Logano is content with the current structure, calling criticisms “a bunch of bullshit” because “everyone knows the rules when the season starts.”
“You can have a great regular season, it seeds you better for the playoffs. That doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to go all the way to the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup Finals or the NBA Finals,” Logano opined. “It doesn’t matter. It might help you. It’s the same way in NASCAR: the way we have the rules now is that you set yourself up much better.”
With a laugh, he concluded he had “nothing to say to [the critics]. I’ve got a pretty sweet trophy right now. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
