Joey Logano has good reason to love the playoffs, which has been a point of contention among the fanbase for years. It suits his driving style and as he himself will tell you, the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford only gets better while under extreme pressure, which seemingly tracks after he walked away Sunday with the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Championship win.
But this year has people particularly out of sorts because Logano’s average finish this year was 17.1, which is now the worst ever for a Cup Champion. The previous record was set just one year ago by his teammate Ryan Blaney with an average finish of 14.1 on his way to the 2023 title.
Joey Logano, Team Penske, Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang
Photo by: NASCAR Media
But both drivers still won when it mattered while the title favorites failed to do so. Logano vaulted himself into the playoffs with a single win and then proceeded to collect three more victories in the Round of 16, Round of 8, and the Championship 4. Logano raced within the rules of this format presented to him and in his mind, that’s no different than any other major sport in America.
“To your point about championships and what it is, the only reason why they don’t say this about other sports is because they didn’t change the playoff system,” said Logano. “But the playoff system in other sports is not much different than what this is. 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. 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.”
“It’s a bunch of bullshit”
He also noted how there were drivers such as Tyler Reddick and Kyle Larson who entered the playoffs with far more bonus points than him. “They have the same opportunity to go out there and win and move on to the next round,” said Logano, who also had to make up more ground than those drivers in order to get to the same place.
“So for someone to say this isn’t real, it’s a bunch of bullshit in my opinion. 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.”
While a format like this is common among stick-and-ball sports, it’s still quite foreign in the majority of motorsports. NHRA has been doing its own version of the playoffs since 2007 and Australian Supercars will be introducing a knockout-style system similar to NASCAR in 2025. Beyond that, it’s still mostly season-long systems across the world.
The times are a-changin’
Logano’s closing message on this topic was simple: Times change. Yet, NASCAR has had a playoff system for 20 years and the current format for ten, but people still put together points standings based on the Winston Cup points of old — an X post on that exact thing following the title-decider has garnered nearly 300,000 views.
“…People that just got to accept what the times are,” added Logano. “Times change, right? 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. Gosh, it is awesome. I watch the Xfinity Series and Truck Series, and it’s hard for me to talk about the Cup Series because I’m in it, but I watch those as a fan, whether it’s from the booth or just on TV, like I did last night. That’s entertaining stuff. I’m glued to my TV, especially a lot more during the playoffs than I am during the regular season. What’s wrong with that? Golly, man. I don’t know. Makes me mad, sorry. I’m not sorry. (Laughter).”
Joey Logano, Team Penske, Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang
Photo by: NASCAR Media
Logano also pointed how scouring over hypothetical points is pointless because the races would have played out completely differently in such a format. While this discussion isn’t going away anytime soon, the fact of the matter is that NASCAR is never going back, and its newly crowned three-time champion of this playoff era is perfectly fine with that.
“I’ve got a pretty sweet trophy right now. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
