It's shocking to think NASCAR's playoff format has been around for 20 years. Its Chase for the Cup, the original 'new' playoff format, kicked off in 2004. In its first three years, it produced three champions from three different organizations. It seemed to be accomplishing exactly what NASCAR intended it to do, keeping the title fight interesting to the very end. And then came along Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus, and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team to smash their hopes into a million Lowe's-colored pieces.
NASCAR has always been keen to tweak the format, and come 2014, the series' complete overhaul stunned the racing world. The new, multi-round elimination format would hopefully ensure no single driver could ever game the system like that again. Except, after Joey Logano's third title win in Phoenix, along with Team Penske clinching a third consecutive Cup title, you have to wonder if maybe they'd successfully accomplished NASCAR's nightmare: Cracking the code to winning the playoff game as the No. 48 once did.
Think of it this way, Logano is this format's Jimmie Johnson. Now, stay with me because I'm not saying Logano has had Johnson-esque seasons. But he is the only driver to win three titles in this format, collecting three of the last seven Cup championships. After last weekend's 1-2, Penske has now won three consecutive which hasn't been done since the Johnson era. Obviously, it's not the five years of dominance the Johnson/Knaus enjoyed, but it's still quite the feat for a format designed to ensure any sort of dominance or consistent winning is prevented. Yet, no driver has made more final four appearances than Logano.
A look at the years where Logano has won reveals a common trend: Every single time he won the Cup, he always won the first race in the Round of 8 too. Logano advanced on by shoving Martin Truex Jr. out of the way to win Martinsville in 2018, out-dueled Ross Chastain at Vegas in 2022, and bested everyone in a fuel-mileage race at Vegas in 2024. For the two weeks that followed these critical race wins, his team focused solely on the finale, enough that he usually ran terribly at the races in between. Yet he'd then go on to win the finale and title. He never won more than two races during the 26-race regular season of any of these title runs either, but he did win when it mattered most.
Beware the 48...and now the 22?
When the Chase for the Cup kicked off each year, everyone knew that they had to accept Johnson and the No. 48's eventual success. It wouldn't (and didn't) matter what sort of season they had up to that point. Johnson and team always found a way in through those final ten races. Hell, he even managed to win a couple more titles as NASCAR changed the format around on him, including his record-tying seventh title in the Championship 4 era. That actually would be the first time Johnson had ever won at Homestead, because in all of the years before that, he never needed to (points racing was still a crucial part of the old playoff format). Like Logano, he did exactly what he needed to do, when he needed to do it, and benefited greatly because of it.
These teams basically used the first 26 race weeks to prepare and perfect their cars for the races that truly mattered. Just look at Logano earlier in the year. His crew always seemed to be figuring things out and stumbling over themselves at the start of these seasons that lead into title wins. In 2024, he had just one top-five finish in the first 14 races. In 2022, Logano 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.
Logano's consistent approach of winning — when he needed to — is extremely reminiscent of the Hendrick No. 48 of the late 2000s. Again, Logano isn't dominating like Johnson did, but that's not what this particular format demands. We're looking at a format where you can technically win the Daytona 500, DNF the next 25 races, then proceed to bounce through each round on the back of race wins and capture the big prize.
If you can make the playoffs and survive the first two rounds, you're only one win away from being within reach of the crown. It's frustrating to many as Logano is taking mostly average seasons, like his 17.1 average finish this year, the lowest-ever for a championship-winning driver, and turning them into gold, but he's simply gaming the system better than those around them, just like the No. 48 of old.
And this had bled over to his Penske teammate Ryan Blaney, who earned only one regular season win in 2023 and two in 2024 before collecting playoff wins at the most critical moments -- including the Round of 8. Where Blaney differs from Logano is that he tends to win the closing race of that penultimate round instead of the opener.
On the flip side, and what makes the two different, is the majority of Johnson's wins during that five-year run were earned during the regular season. Why? Because -- and I know I'm repeating myself but I want to emphasize this -- that's what the format demanded. The final ten races worked as a sort of a mini-season with the most points over those ten weeks serving as the path towards the title. There were still bonus points, but they came from wins during the regular season, so that's what he did while remaining consistent in the finals stretch.
While still a force of nature in the postseason, 22 of Johnson's 35 wins between 2006 and 2010 came during the regular season. He only went out to win a bunch of playoff races when he couldn't shake his rivals. For example, in 2007, he was trailing Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon halfway through the postseason, so like flipping a switch, Johnson proceeded to win four of the last five races, crushing the hopes of his fellow Hall of Famer.
As for Logano, he wasn't always like this. Looking at the strongest season of his career (2015), he finished sixth in points. That year, he appeared to go 100% in every single playoff race whether he was locked into the next round or not. He ended up sweeping an entire round, which has never been done by anyone else in this format (although Larson did win three in a row across two rounds in 2021).
But Logano didn't make it to the Championship 4 that year because in his quest to win no matter what, he drew the ire of Matt Kenseth by spinning him out in the battle for the win. Kenseth took revenge at Martinsville while Logano was leading, sinking his 2015 title bid. Maybe he learned something from that, as what we're seeing now is a far more decisive Logano who is aggressive, but only when it matters. Perhaps Kenseth did him a favor that day, helping to shape the three-time champion we now know.
The Chase for the Cup had Johnson and people hated it because he was too dominant. The elimination format today has Logano, but people hate it because he's not dominant enough during the year. When NASCAR used a season-long format, people hated that a driver [Kenseth] with a single win in March could point their way to the title. No matter the system, someone is going to figure it out how to hack it and take advantage of that opportunity. That's just how it is. Logano and Team Penske together appear to have harvested that power. We'll see if they continue to put it to use for another title in 2025.
