Joey Logano is now a three-time Cup champion, becoming just the 10th driver to ever win that many titles. His season was an odd one in truth, but something we’ve come to expect from the Penske Ford man.
He was very quiet in the regular season, winning just once to make the playoffs. But when the time came, he did exactly what he needed to do in order to advance through each round.
At Phoenix, he held off team-mate Ryan Blaney for the crucial win, once again snatching the crown out from under several drivers who had statistically better seasons.
Nailing the formula for playoff success
Joey Logano has an uncanny ability to turn average seasons into championship runs, especially with NASCAR’s current playoff format. In 2024, he earned one top-five finish in the first 14 races. In 2022, he was a third of the way through the season before he even won a race. In 2018, it was the same story again, with a single superspeedway victory during the entirety of the regular season.
But once the playoffs arrived, Logano was always ready to pounce on the opportunity in front of him, even when he didn’t have the best car. In each of those three years, he won the title.
Logano has never been the most popular champion among the fans, but his latest title run has some people particularly miffed. His average finish of 17.1 is the lowest ever for a Cup champion.
To make it even stranger, he was briefly eliminated in the Round of 12 until a post-race technical infraction for Alex Bowman at the Charlotte Roval vaulted Logano back into the fray. And there’s the fact that the win that ensured him a place in the Championship 4 was collected via a fuel mileage gamble. Logano only led six laps in Las Vegas.
But the 34-year-old wasn’t going to let criticism around his championship keep him down either, proudly declaring after Phoenix: “I’ve got a pretty sweet trophy right now. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
He, and by extension Team Penske, have figured out this notoriously unpredictable format, and they should be respected for that. Penske has now won three consecutive titles and Logano has made the final four more times than any other driver.
And while it can be argued that Kyle Larson had an objectively better season, that simply doesn’t always matter in modern NASCAR. It’s all about winning in the right moment and Logano is one of the best at rising to the occasion when the big prize is in sight.
