Joey Logano stepped on their throats.
Repeatedly.
It wasn’t the Team Penske way when Logano walked into the media center at Phoenix Raceway on Saturday and declared his intent to ‘step on their throats’ in the NASCAR Cup Series championship race but it was a reflection of both his confidence and bravado.
Sure, the No. 22 team had a really good practice day and then posted the second-best qualifying time but a general rule of thumb in motorsports is to not give the other team(s) bulletin board material. Logano has always done things his own way.
“I told you, I work better under pressure,” Logano said. “I’ve got to put pressure on myself, and that’s one of the ways. This race started weeks ago and in the (media center) is part of the race. The race never stops.”
When his boss, the venerable Roger Penske first heard that quotes, he was of two minds. It’s not the Team Penske way but …
“This is the second time I’ve heard it,” Penske said after the race. “I might have used different words, but that’s okay, when you win, you can say whatever you want, I guess.”
That’s the thing.
Logano went out and led 107 laps, second only to recently eliminated Christopher Bell, and maintained that the first to the finish line championship race against Ryan Blaney, William Byron and Tyler Reddick went through him.
Blaney, his teammate at Penske, jumped Logano on a green flag run and he stepped on his throat. Byron went long on a green flag run, caught a fortuitous caution to cycle to the lead, and Logano responded by stepping on his throat.
Blaney, over the final long green flag run to the finish, made up several second on Logano and got to within a bumper of winning the race and championship … and had his throat stepped on, figuratively, again.
Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe showed race winning speed from the moment they unloaded off the hauler and the driver came into the media center and said he was figuratively going to crush his competition.
“We got them down now,” Logano said Saturday. “We just have to put our foot on their throats. We feel pretty strong about our team, and these type of pressure situations we feel really solid about as far as our team in these moments.”
Even in real time, the media room pushed back surprised that Logano would possibly give his competition the extra motivation, no matter how good the No. 22 team looked in that moment.
“Yeah, that’s what we have to do, right,” Logano said. “We have them where we want them right now. We just have to keep them there.”
His crew chief shrugged it off, knowing that’s just how his driver is.
“I mean, that’s Joey,” Wolfe said. “That’s typical Joey. He shows up in the playoffs, and he’s able to handle this pressure better than anyone in the garage, obviously. That’s why he’s a three-time champ now.
“There’s times when there’s other situations that I maybe give him some advice to maybe not worry about or not say something, but that’s who he is. That’s fine. That doesn’t bother me.”
It’s hard to argue with the results, winning the championship three times over the past seven seasons, and making the final four more times than literally anyone else in the 11-year history of the current elimination playoff format.
2014
2016
2018*
2020
2022*
2024*
Some of his peers have taken to calling it the ‘even year bullshit’ and Logano is starting to buy into it, too.
“I’m starting to believe in this stuff,” Logano said. “I’ve always been Mr. Anti-luck, anti-superstitions. I always do the opposite of what people say you should do. And when people say good luck, I say, I don’t need it; there’s no such thing.
“I don’t know. I don’t believe it’s luck. I still don’t believe it’s luck, but it is kind of weird that it’s gone this way. I promise you I will try hard next year, too. I don’t understand it, though. Hopefully we break the streak next year. That would be cool. I’d much rather break it by making the Championship 4 on an odd year than missing it on an even year. So, let’s do it again next year.”
If he does do it again next year, or in any year for that matter, the next one would tie him with Jeff Gordon on the all-time championship list, not that a portion of the NASCAR fanbase wants to accept or acknowledge it.
Factually, looking at the entire body of work of the Team Penske No. 22, it’s the worst statistical season to ever produce a Cup Series championship. Logano doesn’t lead the division in any statistical category and his 17.1 average finish is 14th best. His other season long average are equally unflattering.
But what Logano did is win at Nashville, when it was the only way to advance into the playoffs by that point of the summer, and then win the first race once the playoffs began to advance again. He was actually eliminated at the end of the second round but was reinstated once Alex Bowman infamously was disqualified for a weight violation.
Logano and Wolfe then went out and won the very next race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to earn an automatic berth into this final four race and had nearly a month to prepare for it. The races at Homestead and Martinsville didn’t go well, either, but they also didn’t matter.
“We didn’t run good in the last two weeks because we didn’t focus on them,” Logano said. “We didn’t care. We showed up here and was able to be fast off the truck, qualify well, lead a lot of laps in the first stage. And we got ourselves back a little bit there further than I wanted to, but able to have a restart at the end that got us back to the lead and able to race Blaney to the end.”
But again, that his entire body of work doesn’t match the archetype of a NASCAR champion, there are no shortage of fans calling the championship illegitimate, and Logano did not mince words when asked about it.
He said other sports playoffs have seeding and it makes their path easier or worse depending on how that regular season went. Logano did not have a good regular season but did the one bare minimum thing to get into the tournament and proceeded to win three of the most important races when it mattered the most.
“So, for someone to say this isn’t real, it’s a bunch of bullshit 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 (Team Penske) has been able to do for the last three years.
“I don’t like people talking that way because if the rules were the old way, we would play it out differently, wouldn’t we?”
The former ‘Sliced Bread’ also feels like he’s constantly been under scrutiny, having to justify his place in the Cup Series or NASCAR history, so why wouldn’t his championships be the same way?
“It’s been my whole career, bud, like from the very beginning,” Logano said. “It’s just what it is. I’ve got thick skin. Bring it on.”
And to anyone who brings it on, either on the track, or off it, Logano intends to step on their throats too.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.