Joey Logano has pretty much nailed the playoff format. The Team Penske driver secured his third Cup Series title with an impressive victory at Phoenix Raceway, ensuring a three-peat for Team Penske. While the No. 22 Ford racer has excelled within the postseason framework, the triumph didn’t come without controversy, as more consistent drivers such as Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell failed to make it into the Championship 4. However, many opined the 34-year-old was a deserved contender, performing when it mattered the most to lift the Bill France Cup in the final race of the season—albeit with an unorthodox tactic…

Revealing the secrets behind his success, Logano shared insights about his approach going into the championship race at the 1-mile tri-oval. Has the Team Penske driver found a way of achieving glory at NASCAR’s highest level?

Work smart, not hard

That’s a mantra Joey Logano seems to have adopted, given the way he won the championship in 2024. While the amount of effort he has put in cannot be underestimated, the Connecticut native has epitomized what a ‘clutch performer’ means with his performances in the Cup Series. He won a race at Nashville Superspeedway during the regular season to qualify for the playoffs and went on to secure a statement victory in the opening postseason race at Atlanta. Having almost been eliminated at the Charlotte Roval, Bowman’s disqualification (after his vehicle was found to be too light) gave Logano another shot at the title, which he capitalized on by winning in Las Vegas.

Victory in the opening Round of Eight race gave the racer plenty of time to prepare for the championship race in Phoenix. As that’s exactly what The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi pointed out. Sitting for a post-race conversation with the Cup Series champion, the journalist asked, “You look back to 2018, you look at 2022, 2024. The common denominator in many of those years you won the first race in the semi-final round, and it gave you guys a bit of a start to kind of prepare…I sat down with your crew chief Paul Wolfe a few weeks ago, and he kind of walked me through this. But from your perspective…what is that like having those extra weeks to prepare where you’re not under the stress of what we’ve seen at Homestead and we saw at Martinsville?”

Logano then revealed why he deliberately underperformed at Homestead-Miami and Martinsville on The Teardown podcast, “It’s important for two reasons. One, you said, you’re not under stress, right, so your batteries are recharged when you get here…For us, our advantage was that we got in sooner and we took those two weeks to really not do good at those two racetracks because we were focused in here. I guess, you know, looking back at it, there’s a reason why we won those three and it seems like that’s the recipe to do it. It’s easy to say, hard to do.”

Notably, after Logano entered the Championship 4, he finished P28 and P10 at Homestead-Miami, and Martinsville, respectively. After winning the 2024 South Point 400, Logano and the No. 22 Ford team set their sights on Phoenix Raceway, as the outcome in the remaining two playoff races became inconsequential. Even though fans speculated that had he not won at Vegas, the Team Penske driver would have struggled in the subsequent two races, the 34-year-old shut down the hypothetical scenario by saying, “You can’t say that because we would run completely different at those racetracks because we’d actually care, you know.”

The #22’s crew chief also confirmed the same in a conversation with Bianchi. “So I sat down with (Joey Logano’s crew chief) Paul Wolfe at Homestead about this, because he did it in 2022…He’s like…‘There’s only so much you can really do with the car’…There’s only, because of this era, the Next Gen car, with the parts and pieces, there really isn’t a lot of like, fine-tuning that you can do, or find little things,” the journalist paraphrased.

“And so what Paul said to me was — really what he said, from his perspective, was strategy. It was like it allowed him to go and really look through his notes and kind of layout things and analyze and say, ‘Okay, if this thing happens on this, you know, this lap, we can do this,’ and it was really, he felt it was like, a real advantage like that.” 

Ultimately, the team’s approach paid off, as having more time to prepare helped them perform when it mattered the most. Joey Logano qualified in 2nd place at Phoenix Raceway, winning the opening stage and showcasing a defensive masterclass to keep his teammate Ryan Blaney at bay during the closing laps. In a sport where the finest of margins can make all the difference, having more time to prepare ultimately proved to be the difference maker, with the Team Penske driver saying, “You’re not under stress, right? So your batteries are recharged.”

But that’s not all as…

Logano defends the playoff system after Phoenix Raceway triumph

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If there’s one driver who has excelled in the elimination format, it’s Joey Logano. The Team Penske driver has made it to the Championship 4 six times in the last decade, reinforcing the ‘Even-Year-Logano’ theory that has been making rounds on social media. While the playoff system has been a perennial punching bag in the NASCAR community, and in some cases, rightly so, the Team Penske driver doesn’t share the same views as some of his colleagues, who consider it ‘broken’.

With Kyle Larson securing six wins but not making it to Championship 4, questions were raised about the win-and-in format, which failed to reward drivers for their consistency. However, Logano defended the existing postseason structure by saying, “Can we tweak things? I’m sure. But gosh, it just makes incredible storylines all the way through. And everyone has the same opportunity…The advantage that the 5 had, the 45 had, going into the playoffs – what else could you want? They earned the advantage…if you don’t make it from that, like oh well.”

Ever since the Next-Gen cars were introduced in 2022, Team Penske has been dominating the Cup Series championship, winning three titles in a row. As for Joey Logano, he has found a way to thrive in a complicated format, while his counterparts Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson have struggled. It’s not difficult to see why the No. 22 Chevy driver is enjoying life under the existing postseason framework, having become the 10th driver in NASCAR history to win three or more championships. However, could NASCAR look into rewarding consistency by making changes to the existing structure? Well, only time will tell.

But till then, let us know which playoff format you prefer in the comments below!