Like Johnson before him, has Logano cracked the playoff format?

It’s shocking to think NASCAR’s playoff format has been around for 20 years. Its Chase for the Cup, the original ‘new’ playoff format, kicked off in 2004. In its first three years, it produced three champions from three different organizations. It seemed to be accomplishing exactly what NASCAR intended it to do, keeping the title fight interesting to the very end. And then came along Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus, and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team to smash their hopes into a million Lowe’s-colored pieces.

NASCAR has always been keen to tweak the format, and come 2014, the series’ complete overhaul stunned the racing world. The new, multi-round elimination format would hopefully ensure no single driver could ever game the system like that again. Except, after Joey Logano’s  third title win in Phoenix, along with Team Penske clinching a third consecutive Cup title, you have to wonder if maybe they’d successfully accomplished NASCAR’s nightmare: Cracking the code to winning the playoff game as the No. 48 once did.

Think of it this way, Logano is this format’s Jimmie Johnson. Now, stay with me because I’m not saying Logano has had Johnson-esque seasons. But he is the only driver to win three titles in this format, collecting three of the last seven Cup championships. After last weekend’s 1-2, Penske has now won three consecutive which hasn’t been done since the Johnson era. Obviously, it’s not the five years of dominance the Johnson/Knaus enjoyed, but it’s still quite the feat for a format designed to ensure any sort of dominance or consistent winning is prevented. Yet, no driver has made more final four appearances than Logano.

A look at the years where Logano has won reveals a common trend: Every single time he won the Cup, he always won the first race in the Round of 8 too. Logano advanced on by shoving Martin Truex Jr. out of the way to win Martinsville in 2018, out-dueled Ross Chastain at Vegas in 2022, and bested everyone in a fuel-mileage race at Vegas in 2024. For the two weeks that followed these critical race wins, his team focused solely on the finale, enough that he usually ran terribly at the races in between. Yet he’d then go on to win the finale and title. He never won more than two races during the 26-race regular season of any of these title runs either, but he…