Ousted Joey Logano Sends 3-Word Message to NASCAR as Champion-Turned-Underdog Succumbs to Cup Giants

Despite being the defending champion, Team Penske star Joey Logano looked like an underdog for most of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season. Of course, it was not entirely his fault. Team Penske’s car saw a huge drop-off from the previous season, something that not many people saw coming given Joey’s run back then. He has been eliminated from the playoffs and is currently racing for owner points. The 33-year-old recently expressed a suggestion he had for NASCAR to make the racing better and more entertaining for the fans.

Joey Logano had successfully qualified for the playoffs in 2023, but he was ousted in the very first round. The final round of 16 race at Bristol saw the Team Penske man involved in a huge crash due to which he retired from the race. His points tally was not good enough after Bristol as he was overtaken by the gladiators of Cup giants like Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing. 

Joey Logano suggests NASCAR a way to gain more fans

Logano has always been one to support any decision that would make racing in NASCAR better, not just for the fans, but the drivers as well. His dissatisfaction with how the current Formula One season is unfolding proves that more than being a driver, he is a fan of motorsports and he, just like all of us, wants to be entertained when he watches a race.

While the competition in NASCAR is better and more entertaining than in Formula One, the Team Penske driver believes that a lot can still be done to improve the racing factor. The 33-year-old believes that the extremely close running of every single car on the grid in NASCAR makes it difficult for fans to follow the overtakes and on-track battles, which indeed does get difficult at times.

Therefore, Logano proposed his plan to NASCAR on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio to keep changing the rules every couple of years, especially with the downforce, to keep on-track matters interesting. At a time when NASCAR is not having that great a viewership, his ideas may indeed be something the organizers could have a look at.

“I think change the rules, change the rules. Change the downforce levels, right? Like take a bunch of downforce off of it, get rid of the diffuser, oh boy, we’re starting all over. Everybody’s starting all over. That would be huge, that would be a massive change as far as car setup, and the fuel would be more spread out as far as speed and creates better racing,” the 33-year-old said.

“If you can change the rules up every couple of years, something big, like big rules change, I think that creates some separation in the field that ultimately creates better passes and racing I think,” the Team Penske star added.

The 2022 Cup Series champion has had a season to forget. Both he and his team have been underperforming quite a bit and things have only gone from bad to worse. There was a time when Team Penske was not just the strongest Ford team, but one of the heavyweights in the Cup Series. This season, they have not even been one of the strongest Ford teams and Joey Logano’s lackluster performances have also played a huge part in that.

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Logano had started the season off quite well, winning the races at Daytona and Atlanta in the first half of the regular season. Back then, the defending champion was seen as someone who would go deep into the playoffs and might even take a second straight Cup Series victory. However, the second half of the season and the playoffs have been an absolute travesty for the 33-year-old.

His team, Team Penske, which was at one point the strongest among the Ford teams, has been overshadowed by a resurgent Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. RFK won back-to-back races at Michigan and Richmond and followed that up with a 1-2 finish in the final regular-season race at Daytona. Team Penske, on the other hand, last won a race in May and it was not even Logano, but Ryan Blaney, who achieved that result.

Ford themselves have had a poor 2023, scoring the least wins out of them, Toyota and Chevrolet with eight. Toyota is not too far ahead with 10 wins, but the Chevys have absolutely dominated with a whopping 17 wins to their name so far. As far as team performances go, Team Penske does not hold a candle to Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports this year. While the Ford team has only won three races so far this year, JGR has won seven races so far and Denny Hamlin is a championship contender. HMS has won the most races, as expected, with 10. Kyle Larson won four of them and William Byron the remaining six.

Perhaps Logano was alluding to the HMS and JGR dominance this season when he said in the SiriusXM interview, “You don’t want it to look like F1 where there’s one car that’s significantly faster than the rest of them, then you have the same winner every week.”

So while it may suggest that Joey Logano has not been the strongest Ford driver, his team has not exactly been able to field a car that is even close to what HMS and JGR have fielded. Now that he is out of the playoffs, Logano won’t have the pressure of expectations on his shoulders and can race freely but he will have to go back to the drawing board at the end of the campaign and prepare to make his comeback to the top in 2024.

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