AVONDALE, Ariz. — Joey Logano doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that some NASCAR fans don’t like the knockout playoff format that’s decided the Cup Series champion for the past 11 years. He doesn’t care that some people think his three championships should carry an asterisk next to them. He doesn’t care that his recurring brilliance during the playoffs is not properly appreciated.
Go ahead and sling those arrows all you want because it doesn’t matter. The celebration of winning a third title in seven years — his latest coming Sunday, when he expertly held off teammate Ryan Blaney over a spirited battle over the final 54 laps — more than drowns out any criticism, his place as one of the most clutch drivers in NASCAR history more than solidified.
“It’s been my whole career, like from the very beginning,” Logano said. “It’s just what it is. I’ve got thick skin. Bring it on.”
The rap against Logano is that in the years he’s won the championship, his record during the regular season was largely underwhelming. He had just a single victory during the 2024 regular season — and a fuel-mileage win at that — but otherwise was rather ordinary. Out of 16 title-eligible drivers, he came into the playoffs ranked 15th.
But the nature of NASCAR’s playoff format is such that a driver doesn’t need sustained excellence during the first 26 races, only the final 10. A driver needing season-long consistency is a thing from a wayback era, a fact fans have a hard time accepting even though NASCAR’s leadership has made it clear the playoffs are here to stay.
And when it comes to NASCAR’s knockout playoff era, Logano again proved he’s in a class of his own. He won the playoff opener at Atlanta, securing a spot in the Round of 12, then advanced to the semifinal round. There, he won the first of the round’s three races to ensure himself a spot in Sunday’s Championship 4 race and buy time to prepare for the finale — a formula he used in each of his previous title wins.
His mastery of the format warrants praise, considering it’s designed to induce stress by forcing drivers into uncomfortable situations where their only recourse to alleviate the pressure is to win. It’s a mental grind that chews up even the best by punishing the smallest mistake.
“I think as a team, we thrive under those situations,” said Logano, who also won the title in 2018 and 2022. “That’s why we have a lot of playoff wins in comparison to the regular season, percentage-wise. I think that’s a big piece of it. We got the attitude that we’re never out of it. And I think that’s what’s kept us going. … This season in particular, midway through it, we could have called it a rebuilding year, but that would have been the loser thing to say. We kept grinding and figuring it out and getting a little bit better and a little bit better.”
There isn’t anything “loser” in Logano’s playoff mindset. Rarely does he complain about the intricacies of the playoff format like so many of his contemporaries do. He embraces the challenge for what it is, believing he and his team’s determination is the separator.
“We could have called it a rebuilding year,” Joey Logano says of the 2024 season, “but that would have been the loser thing to say.” (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
That approach is part of why he has hoisted the Bill France Cup three times, despite entering the playoffs as an underdog in each of those title-winning seasons. His latest title makes him one of just 10 drivers to have won three or more championships. The 34-year-old is only the fifth driver under the age of 35 to win three, an illustrious group whose members include Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, David Pearson and Richard Petty.
Inclusion within this group is not by happenstance. This is by skill.
Still, detractors will say Logano’s success is a byproduct of the system rather than a great driver and team excelling. In a supposedly unfair system that invites randomness, the same driver has prevailed three times in seven years and advanced to the Championship 4 a series-best six times in 11 years.
“For someone to say this isn’t real, it’s a bunch of bull—, in my opinion,” Logano said. “That’s wrong. This is something that everyone knows the rules when the season starts. We figured out how to do it the best and figured out how to win. It’s what our team has been able to do for the last three years. So I don’t like people talking that way because if the rules were the old way, we would play it out differently.
“I just think that’s just a bunch of hearsay back there and people that just got to accept what the times are. And I don’t know if you have a lot of the moments that we have today without the playoff system that we have. Do you want to see the championship crown with three races to go? Because that’s what used to happen. That’s pretty boring. You’ve got do-or-die moments. You’ve got the pressure. You’ve got all these things going on the last 10 weeks. You have guys trying to get into the playoffs. You have that storyline. How many storylines could we make? It’s amazing. For people to complain, it makes me mad. It makes me frustrated to hear that.”
In other sports, Logano’s ability to rise to the occasion in the playoffs combined with a knack for overcoming long odds would receive widespread adulation. In NASCAR land, it’s met with mostly a collective shrug. Almost as if he should have to apologize.
“I’ve got nothing to say to them,” Logano said. “I’ve got a pretty sweet trophy right now. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
That trophy he collected Sunday night is going alongside the two others he has won, a collection likely to continue growing because this is who Logano is — a champion whose greatness frequently manifests itself in the playoffs, never satisfied and always wanting more and more.
“Every year when the season starts, the goal is to win the championship,” Logano said. “As many years as I’ve got left is as many as I want to get. I don’t really know what that is yet. But I still enjoy winning, and it’s going to keep going.”
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Joey Logano celebrating with the Bill France Cup on Sunday: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
