After a Phoenix championship battle that saw Joey Logano bag his third Cup series title ahead of defending champion and teammate Ryan Blaney by just three-tenths of a second, veteran driver turned commentator Kevin Harvick unleashed a series of unfiltered take on the latest episode of his Happy Hour podcast. He dove deep into why the other half of the championship four, William Byron and Tyler Reddick couldn’t quite measure up to Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney’s championship pedigree.

As a former title challenger to Logano and one of the most respected voices in NASCAR, Harvick had plenty to say about the qualities lacking in the drivers who came up short in their quest for the top step of the 2024 season.

Harvick claims Joey Logano is “able to find another gear” during title fights

It was his co-host Kaitlyn Vincie, who kicked off the conversation with a simple question – was Harvick surprised that Tyler Reddick and William Byron were essentially non-factors in the race for the championship? Without missing a beat, Harvick was blunt as he said “Yeah, I was not surprised”. He went on to explain that while all four contenders (Reddick, William Byron, Logano and Blaney) had the potential to bring a dominant car to the finale, only Logano seemed to show that “extra something” when it mattered.

According to Kevin Harvick, that “something” is Logano’s uncanny ability to rise to the occasion. “Joey Logano can find another gear”, he said, explaining that Penske’s No. 22 Mustang doesn’t just rely on speed but on a whole different level of strategic brilliance. “He just beats them by moving the pieces around the board better than everybody else.” Take a look at his Round of 8 win at Las Vegas. Handed a lifeline by Bowman’s disqualification, Joey Logano didn’t come to Las Vegas low on energy. He made a risky call with his mileage strategy and eventually went on to win the race.

Kevin Harvick pulled no punches as he spoke. In his eyes, Reddick and Byron just haven’t figured out how to push themselves – and their teams – beyond the limit in the way Logano can. “These guys can’t dot the i’s and cross the T’s and motivate themselves like Joey Logano”, he said. The gap between being a good driver and being a champion, according to Kevin, isn’t just about having a fast car, it’s about having that killer instinct and the ability to adapt when the going gets tough. And no one on the grid, in recent years, has demonstrated that ability better than Joey Logano.

Finishing 12th in the overall points standings, Joey Logano has been quite substandard compared to his peers, which is a bit weird to say out loud considering he only went and won the whole damn thing. Taking a total of Joey, only three stage wins, four race wins (three of which came in the 10 races), and seven top fives, the eventual champion achieved comfortably less than any other driver in the final top eight standings.

This never-say-die attitude is something Harvick has had the first-hand experience of being a victim of. Back in 2018, the year Joey Logano took his maiden Cup series title, Harvick was one of the most successful and consistent drivers. Driving for Stewart Haas back then, Harvick took eight wins. But it was all for naught as an ill-timed caution in the final moments of the race allowed Logano to snatch the title from Harvick’s grasp.

“How can Tyler Reddick perform at the level that he was at at Homestead? How can William Byron perform at the level that he was at when he was winning races at the beginning of the year?”, said Harvick as he harkened back to Reddick’s scintillating Homestead last lap pass on Ryan Blaney that secured his championship 4 spot in the first place. “Having that high level intensity of focus, it’s something that those two guys need to find and need to be capable of making their cars faster.” While Harvick acknowledged Reddick and Byron’s obvious talent that got them to the dance, he challenged them to elevate their game and discover a new level of focus to break through and win that elusive Cup series title.

What went wrong for Byron and Reddick?

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While Kevin Harvick was dishing out the tough critiques, the race at Phoenix told its own story. Finishing a mere 0.33 seconds behind his teammate, Ryan Blaney was agonizingly close to clinching back-to-back NASCAR Cup series titles. Blaney made an impressive charge in the race’s final stretch, storming from sixth to second place within the last 55 laps. Despite eradicating a significant gap to Joey, he couldn’t quite close the deal on his fellow champion, admitting that he “had nothing left to throw at Logano”.

William Byron’s championship challenge unraveled with his strategy as it fell apart after a late-race caution. Staying out longer before his pit stop Byrons crew-chief Rudy Fugle took a gamble that could’ve been a race-and-title-winning move – until Zane Smith’s brake failure brought out a caution. That wiped out Byron’s advantage and saw him get swallowed up by a hard-charging Logano in a thrilling three-wide pass. “They were fast on the short run all weekend, and that was kind of our struggle,” Byron noted, reflecting on how quickly the Penske duo caught up to him. Even with the disappointment, Byron’s season included a Daytona 500 win and a return to the Championship 4, a testament to his consistency all year.

Tyler Reddick, the newcomer in the Championship 4, had a relatively quiet outing compared to his rivals. Despite running within the top 10 for most of the day, he just didn’t have the speed to challenge for the top spots. A late surge got him close, but he couldn’t quite hang with the frontrunners as the laps wound down. “We did just about everything we could do today,” Reddick said, acknowledging the solid effort from his 23XI Racing team. Finishing fourth in the standings, Reddick is already setting his sights on the offseason, hoping to come back stronger next year with lessons learned from this championship fight.

But as Harvick pointed out, it’s not just about incremental improvements. It’s about finding that extra gear, that extra level of commitment and focus that turns a good season into a championship-winning one. Whether Reddick and Byron can find that gear remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: they’ve got their work cut out for them if they want to dethrone the current kings of the NASCAR Cup Series.