Holding a Pretty Wheel: NASCAR’s Champions Are Worthy; The Championship System Is Anything But

Maybe he shouldn’t have won, but he did. And with his win Sunday (Nov. 10) at Phoenix Raceway, Joey Logano is the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series champion.

It’s Logano’s third career Cup title and with it, he adds his name to a short list of elite drivers. If Logano wasn’t already a Hall of Fame lock—and he was—this feat would seal the deal.

But did he deserve it?

That’s a pretty broad question.

Statistically, he had a fairly average season for the Next Gen era. It can be argued that based on the numbers, Logano had the worst season of any Cup champion since 1975. (Why 1975? That’s when the Latford points system came into play. Before that, the system changed often and races didn’t pay equal points.)

Logano’s seven top-five finishes, 13 top 10s and 17.1 average are all the worst of any driver in the last 50 seasons. Several drivers have won titles with fewer wins and Logano isn’t at the bottom in laps led or DNFs.

For the record, Matt Kenseth (2003) has both the fewest wins (one) and fewest laps led (354) of any champion since 1975. Darrell Waltrip’s eight DNFs are the most of any driver during the same time frame.

Champions with two wins 1975-2024: Terry Labonte (1982), Alan Kulwicki (1992), Labonte (1996)

Champions with three wins: Waltrip (1985), Tony Stewart (2002), Kurt Busch (2004), Logano (2018), Ryan Blaney (2022). 

In addition, Dale Earnhardt (1991, 1994), Dale Jarrett (1999) and Bobby Labonte (2000) won titles on the back of four race wins, as Logano did this year.

Only Kyle Larson had more wins than Logano this year. 

Three of Logano’s victories came during the playoffs, which isn’t terribly unusual, and it also hasn’t been particularly unusual for a driver in the playoff era (2014 on) to win three or more times in the postseason and not win the title. It’s happened four times (Logano ’15, Kyle Busch ’17, Martin Truex Jr. ’18 and Chase Elliott ’19).

What Logano’s 2024 title exposes is not a weakness in Logano but the weaknesses in the championship system itself.

Many point to Logano’s 17.1 average finish as reasoning for him not being deserving of the championship (more on that later), and it is an anomaly, but it also reveals an unsavory trend.

Since 1975, there are three distinct championship systems. There have been tweaks within those, but in general, champions were decided based on full-season points from 1975-2003. The 10-race Chase system debuted in 2004. Drivers who qualified (and that number did vary, starting at 10 and swelling from there) had their points reset after 26 races, with the title decided among them based on total points in the final 10. The Chase stayed in place through 2013.

The current playoff system, with four rounds and three eliminations, culminating in a one-race championship, has been in place since 2014.

Logano’s high average finish is out of line with other modern champions by anywhere from three to about 12 and a half spots. However, a closer look at the average finish of champions since 1975 shows that with each successive change to the championship system, the average finishes of champions have, in general, gotten lower. The average finishes of playoff champions range from 9.0-17.1. The average finish of all champions in the playoff era is 11.8

Chase-era champions have an average finish of 10.9, almost a spot lower overall. Under the full-season title, it drops to 8.1. No driver has had an average finish of under ninth since 2004.

In other words, consistency still matters, but current drivers don’t have to finish as well as the drivers under the season-long format to win the title. While wins are king, unless NASCAR decides to give the title to the driver with the most wins every year and leave it at that, sustained excellence is still important. Drivers under the playoff system just don’t have to be as excellent as their predecessors.

And therein lies the problem. 

It’s hard to argue that the Chase or playoff systems forced drivers to win more. That may have been NASCAR’s intent, but the win totals of champions don’t bear that out. Between 1975 and 2003, the champion won eight or more races 10 times. Since 2004, that has happened just three times. In general, though champions’ win totals have fluctuated but haven’t changed a whole lot.

The top 10 totals also show decreases over time. Just one full-season champion, Kulwicki in 1992, had fewer than 20 top 10s en route to his title. That consistency carried through the Chase era, with only Stewart having under 20 in his 2011 title. Since 2014, the champion has had fewer than 20 top 10s five times.

The playoff system, introduced to fans with the promise of rewarding wins as well as consistent excellence, has done neither. Wins by champions have held more or less steady for decades. Top 10s, once the telltale sign of a driver who got the most out of his car every single week, have gone down among champions, and that’s backed up by a lower average finish than ever under the current system.

In other words, the system is broken. And race fans know it.

Longtime NASCAR journalist Jeff Gluck posted the following poll on his X account Monday:

https://twitter.com/jeff_gluck/status/1855956305883660426

While there’s support for both the full season and, somewhat surprisingly, the Chase format, more than 80% of fans who responded agreed that either would be better than the current system.

Both the Chase and playoffs’ biggest flaw is that 2-3 position drop in average performance. The reason is simple: teams need to qualify for the title race and they need to perform during it. They can coast in between if they’re at or near the top. The systems designed to force them to race harder have done the exact opposite.

Something has to give. 

And it doesn’t have to be a major overhaul, just a step back to a more effective system with minor tweaks, like more points for winning.

But something needs to change because too many people see the current title as blue-light-special cheap. And that’s a shame.

Logano isn’t to blame, and he’s not undeserving. He won the title under the system in place this year. He needed some outright luck to do it (he’s not the first one), but he got it and he won when he needed to. Hate the game, don’t hate the player.

There’s a subtle difference between the title being worth less and the winner not deserving to win it.

Logano’s third championship season is an anomaly, even for the playoff era. However, he’s not the first driver to win a title that on paper should have gone to someone else, and it’s happened under all three championship systems.

Logano’s is the most notable because he is at the bottom of some key performance categories among other champs. Blaney only had one more top five last year than Logano did this season and one fewer win.

Under the Chase format, Busch’s 2004 title didn’t represent the best season performance. He got hot when it mattered, but Jimmie Johnson’s eight wins and 20 top 10s to Busch’s three and 10 in those categories suggest he had a better year. Stewart’s 2011 title is similar, despite a white-hot Chase with five wins in 10 weeks, Stewart had fewer than 10 top fives all year.

Even the full-season format wasn’t immune to eyebrow raises. Despite 10 wins and 22 top fives, Jeff Gordon dropped the 1996 title to teammate Terry Labonte, who had two wins and 21 top fives. At the end of the day, Gordon had a few more bad finishes and DNFs…it all mattered.

No system is perfect, but it’s clear that the current one is deeply flawed. It’s done the opposite of what was intended, crowning champions with overall lower performances than either the Chase or full-season formats.

That’s not fair to the drivers. Don’t call the champions undeserving; that’s like calling someone who won a game of checkers undeserving because he wasn’t playing chess. 

But at the top level of the sport? They should be playing chess, and NASCAR has given them checkers instead.