Logano Defeats Blaney for Third Career NASCAR Cup Series Championship
Joey Logano rises to the occasion. Always has, and apparently, as he showed in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race, he always will. The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse made the race-winning pass on fellow championship contender William Byron on the final restart of the race, and despite a late-race scare from his Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney, Logano was able to hang on to score the race win, and with it, his third career NASCAR Cup Series championship.
RACE RESULTS: NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix
STANDINGS: NASCAR Cup Series Point Standings After Phoenix
The final stat line for the 2024 season will show Logano finishing the season with the least top-fives (7), and top-10s (13) that he's put up since his 2012 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, where he registered just two top-fives and 12 top-10s.
Regardless of how bad the season appeared for the majority of the regular season, Logano, worked his way into the Playoffs by way of an unexpected five-overtime win at Nashville Superspeedway. Logano then won at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the Round of 16 to advance to the Round of 12. It took a disqualification of Alex Bowman in the final race of the Round of 12 for Logano to advance to the Round of 8. And then in the Round of 8, Logano won the opening race of the round at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Now, Logano, by scoring his 36th career win on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, is one of just 10 drivers to ever win three Bill France Cups, the trophy given to the NASCAR Cup Series champion. The championship also marks the third consecutive championship for Team Penske, which won the 2022 championship with Logano, the 2023 title with Blaney, and again with Logano in 2024.
It's the first time Team Penske has ever won three straight NASCAR Cup Series championships, and it's the first time any team has accomplished the feat since Hendrick Motorsports pulled it off in 2010.
"Yeah, I don't know how to put it into words how hard it is," Logano said of repeating as champions. "But I think anyone listening that has probably done anything in professional sports understands it probably as good as anybody. You put the best of the best at their profession doing the same thing with one common goal, and the competition is always trying to get better, and everybody is wanting to win. It just gets harder and harder to do. The field gets closer and closer every year. It's tough. It's hard to find an advantage over anybody anymore.
"To see that Team Penske has done that, for one, shows that Roger is a fantastic leader. You've got to think of the management of Cindric, Mike Nelson, and Travis Geisler for sure, those guys, they're our leaders. Those are the guys that make the decisions on everything."
While Logano won the race, and the championship, it appeared that his teammate Blaney had the best car in the field, and in the closing laps, Blaney was reeling in Logano, at times by two tenths of a second or more per lap. But as Blaney reached the rear bumper of Logano's car, Logano was able to make his No. 22 Ford ultra-wide, with help from his spotter Coleman Pressley, which forced Blaney to search around to try to find a different lane around.
"I knew once [Blaney] cleared the Hendrick cars and they weren't going to make it easy for him, either, because he was going to be lights-out fast, so I started going. I said, I've got to go," Logano recalled. "He started catching me at a pretty rapid rate, and to your point, those last 20 laps, and really with 13, 14 to go, he was there, and it was one mistake away.
"My car couldn't quite turn as good as his. It's a really big challenge to be able to, one, put dirty air on his line, but my fastest line wasn't where he was. He was able to make the bottom work really well on both ends, but below the yellow line in 1 and 2 and even in the bottom of 3 and 4, but that wasn't my fastest lane."
Logano credited his teammate Blaney for pushing him hard over the final few laps of the race and forcing him to earn it the hard way.
"Yeah, it was very intense. It went from, all right, we're looking good to holy [crap], here he comes," Logano quipped. "Ryan is a tremendous race car driver. He is so fast. He pushes me a lot, more so than any other teammate I ever had. He pushes hard."
Blaney came up shy of picking up his second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championship as he finished second to Logano by just 0.330 seconds. After the race, Blaney took a few moments to compose himself as he was spent after rallying through the field in the closing laps.
"Yeah, just worn out really and just couldn't quite get there," Blaney said. "And tried really hard to do so, just restart didn't really work out and just got too far away from me and took me a while to pass a couple guys and just could never get by Joey. Yeah, ran out of time.
"But congrats to him, congrats to the 22 team and Pennzoil and Ford. They put together a great playoffs, and we're happy. If we're going to race somebody, I'm happy it was him for the championship, and happy to be one-two for Roger, three in a row for Roger, super amazing, and Ford."
Blaney felt his car had the speed to be a race-winning car, he just lacked a little something at the very end of the race.
"Just super-fast, just didn't quite have enough there at the end. At least a Penske car won it, but heck of a battle. I hope the fans enjoyed it, and hopefully we come back even stronger next year," Blaney stated.
William Byron, for the second season in a row, came home third in the NASCAR Cup Series championship race, and he did it with a third-place finish on Sunday at Phoenix. Byron and crew chief Rudy Fugle opted to get off of pit sequence with Logano and Blaney on their final pit stop of the race in order to give them a chance to steal the lead, and potentially the championship.
And the plan worked nearly to perfection for Byron as the caution came out on Lap 250 moments after Byron made his pit stop. That allowed the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports to remain on the lead lap, and as Logano, Blaney and the rest of the lead lap cars opted to pit again, Byron inherited the lead of the race.
Unfortunately, Byron just wasn't able to hold onto the lead on the final restart.
"...as good as [Logano and Blaney] got through 1 and 2, it was just like, man, now they're right on me," Byron said. "I think going into the restart, I thought I had enough of a buffer and I didn't really feel like one lap on tires that was that big a deal. I don't really -- I don't think it was."
Byron says the Team Penske cars were simply better than he was on the short run.
"I just think that they were fast on the short run all weekend, and that was kind of our struggle," Byron explained. "Like we were decent throughout the run, but couldn't really take off with a ton of speed. It wasn't a huge surprise, but they were on me a little bit quicker than I thought they would be."
Tyler Reddick finished fourth in the Championship 4 battle with a sixth-place finish. While Reddick was a fixture inside the top-10 all race long, he simply couldn't find a way to match the speed and track position of the other contenders for the championship throughout the entirety of the race.
"Yeah, we've got to find a little bit more speed, but we made the car better throughout the day," Reddick noted. "We maintained on pit road. We did all that we could, I think, with it. But certainly yeah, it's tough when they just get further and further away over time."
This was Reddick's first career Championship 4 appearance, and while he would have loved to be enjoying the spoils of victory lane, Reddick says it was a big year for himself, and 23XI Racing, and team co-owner Michael Jordan is happy with how they performed down the stretch.
"I didn't talk about Denny yet, but Michael is just proud of the effort of our team all year long," Reddick stated. "We put up a good fight. We didn't make any mistakes that took ourselves out of it. We fought as hard as we could."
Two non-Championship 4 contenders -- Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell -- finished the race in fourth and fifth.
Bubba Wallace was seventh, and he was followed by Chase Elliott, Chris Buescher, and Daniel Suaresz inside of the top-10.
Martin Truex Jr., who captured the pole position in the final race of his full-time NASCAR Cup Series driving career, had trouble keeping track position, and faded to a 17th-place finish. While Truex finished the 2024 campaign without a race win, the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion closed out what has been an illustrious career Sunday at Phoenix.
With an 18th-place finish, Carson Hocevar secured the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year Award over Josh Berry.
Sunday's race also marked the final event for the Stewart-Haas Racing team, which saw Noah Gragson, who drives the No. 10 Ford for the team, collect the best finish for the four-car outfit in the race. Gragson came home in 12th, while Berry was 24th, Chase Briscoe was 29th, and Ryan Preece was 37th.
The race featured four cautions, including two for hard crashes by Ty Gibbs (Lap 2), and Zane Smith (Lap 250). The race also had one red flag period due to a strange incident going into the Stage 2 restart, where the pace car driver missed his mark to turn down pit road, but tried to make it anyway. The pace car would spin out, and would collide with sand barrels at the end of pit road, which led to a red flag for that situation to be cleaned up.
Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.