NASCAR: Logano’s Championship Sparks Playoff Debates

After a season full of twists and turns, ups and downs, and lefts and rights – mostly lefts – the NASCAR Cup Series completed its 76th season by crowning Joey Logano champion for the third time. With 7 top five finishes, 13 top ten, and an average finish of 17.1, his season was statistically the worst of any Cup champion in the modern era. While fans have debated the merits of the postseason since its introduction in 2004, this result has only added to the fire, with the sanctioning body reportedly looking into changes for the 2025 season and beyond.

.@NASCAR will review its playoff format this offseason and changes are possible as soon as next year, though a larger overhaul might need to wait until 2026 if one ended up being pursued, per people familiar. https://t.co/9VMMEZS2jf

— Adam Stern (@A_S12) November 12, 2024

Winning When It Counts

No one has mastered the modern playoff format quite like Logano. In the 11 seasons since its introduction in 2014, he advanced to the final round 6 times and won it 3 times, both the most of any driver. The formula? Don’t worry about season-long consistency or running well at tracks that don’t suit the Team Penske Fords. Instead, they focus on perfecting the tracks they’re strong at, including the site of the season finale, Phoenix. Since a single win guarantees a spot in the playoffs, the regular season is used as an effective 26-race testing session, a long warmup for the real battle to close the year.

It’s an even more extreme version of the strategy that won Jimmie Johnson five straight Cups from 2006-10, a string of dominance that prompted several format changes by NASCAR. It’s possible that Penske winning the first three Cups in the NextGen era will do the same now, as the sport’s leaders tend to fear that such dynasties will turn fans away.

Entertainment vs Fairness

In all sports, there exists a fine balance between ensuring an entertaining conclusion to the season while also maintaining the legitimacy of the championship. If there was no postseason, such as in many European soccer leagues, fans could lose interest as the inevitable champion becomes clear months in advance. However, such a system is perhaps the fairest, ensuring the best team is crowned as such. On the other end of the spectrum, while a large playoff bracket can lead to teams that performed worse throughout the season winning the title, it generates excitement and creates new challenges. Playoffs can also be a fair way of determining the champion, especially when teams don’t play balanced schedules.

NASCAR has slowly crept toward the entertainment side of the spectrum, and Logano’s win is the greatest example yet of that swing. While the current system has succeeded in its goal of creating “game 7 moments” that the sanctioning body craves, it is now looking at potential changes to place greater emphasis on rewarding regular season performance, such as byes to later rounds.

A senior NASCAR team executive said that format changes they'd like to see evaluated include whether the regular-season champion should get locked into one of the latter rounds of the playoffs. https://t.co/55a3A3U4O4

— Adam Stern (@A_S12) November 13, 2024