You know, for Joey Logano advancing to the final four being such a fluke, it sure does seem to happen a lot.
There was a great deal of predictable consternation from the Latford System enthusiasts over what happened on Sunday, the Team Penske No. 22 winning at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and punching their ticket to the NASCAR championship race.
By now, everyone knows their argument.
Logano is only 15th in overall points scored, 15th in average finish, 15th in top-10s, 11th in top-5s and ninth in laps led. They say these are reasons Logano would be the worst statistical champion in the history of the Cup Series all while leaving out the 11-year reality that none of that matters.
The two-time Cup Series champion, both coming under this format in 2018 and 2022, wins races and does so when it matters the most. That is all that matters. Period. Full stop.
Logano won in quintuple overtime at Nashville Superspeedway to advance into the playoffs when his points scored total in all likelihood wasn’t going to do it. He opened the playoffs with a win at Atlanta, and sure, he failed to advanced into the third round until the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 team got disqualified over the scales, but that’s racing.
Provided a second life, Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe engineered a third win on a fuel mileage gambit on Sunday in Sin City and now they have three weeks to prepare for a championship. This is the same blueprint, by the way, that won Logano his previous two championships.
Again, the Latford System is dead and we all went to hospice together two decades ago, and the funeral was over a decade ago.
The currency in which modern Cup Series championships are won, are victories, and Logano is tied for the second most in the series and they have all come when it mattered the most.
This fluke, that Reddit and X are all bent out of shape over, has now happened literally every other year since this format came out in 2014.
2014
2016
2018
2020
2022
2024
Let’s be really clear about this: Logano and the Penske 22 team do not give a shit about how you feel about their top-10s. This isn’t 2003 and they aren’t the Roush Racing 17 team. When everyone takes the green flag in Daytona, no one is mapping their path to Phoenix with 36 top-15s.
From the moment everyone starts racing, it’s about getting to Victory Lane and winning championships, and this team better than any other over the past decade routinely play this game and not the one developed in 1975 to win championships.
It’s no different than the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, an 83-78 wild card team, that advanced through the playoffs that season and claimed the World Series over the Detroit Tigers. The 47-35 Houston Rockets won the NBA Finals.
The stupid, impossible example of winning every race, not winning the championship happened when the 2007 undefeated 16-0 New England Patriots lost to the 10-6 New York Giants.
This is just sports, y’all.
It’s also modern sports, because all other leagues have responded to these low percentage outcome championships by expanding post-season fields and creating additional rounds. The World Series is no longer between the two teams with the most wins in each league.
The champions are just as legitimate.
Ultimately, you don’t have to like this game, or the rules, but under the modern NASCAR Cup Series procedures, Logano is a grandmaster.
Points racing aplenty
Lost in all the debate about the legitimacy of the 22’s championship run, is that there is both no shortage of points racing taking place in each of these three-race rounds and that regular season performance very much matters there too.
Kyle Larson suffered a dreadful day at Vegas, but because they had six wins and a second-place finish in the regular season championship standings, the playoff hit was minimal in the big picture. Their regular season performance mattered.
It’s why the engine seal penalty to Denny Hamlin was so costly in each of these rounds, because when paired with subpar performance, they are living and dying on a prayer at the end of each of these rounds.
Which brings us to the decision made by Adam Stevens, crew chief for Christopher Bell and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 team, to take the fuel and tires while the likes of Logano and Hamlin stayed out.
With Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick and Ryan Blaney crashing earlier in the race, playing it safe and maximizing points was the high percentage decision. Maybe it doesn’t net the No. 20 team the win, but it nearly did, but it puts them in a position to where at +42, they just need basically finish the next two races and they are racing for a championship for a third year in a row.
Meanwhile, that crash is poised to eliminate the drivers that finished first, third and sixth in the regular season points standings but it’s just another reminder that winning is everything in this format.
Reddick won twice in the regular season and is amidst a terrible slump since the start of the playoffs. Elliott finished third in the standings but has just one win and Blaney has two wins. Hamlin more or less lost around 10 points in that penalty, depending on how things could have played out and 17 would look a lot better than 27 right now too.
Again, this format all but requires winning in bulk during the regular season or winning at the end, to make anything else a moot point. The former allows those with that points advantage to points race and with four spots in the championship race, there are just multiple paths to a championship now.
They are all equally viable.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.