Only Yesterday: Thrice as Nice — Joey Logano Joins the 3-Time Champions Club

Joey Logano is now a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, which puts him into a six-member fraternity.

The other five are NASCAR Hall of Fame drivers, and there’s little doubt that Logano will join them eventually. Regardless of how you feel about the system that resulted in his third title, it’s just another in a line of unique paths that led to a championship trifecta.

The first three-timer was also one of the most recognizable legends in the history of American auto racing. Lee Petty came into 1959 with a pair of titles to his name already and was at the top of his game.

There were 44 points-paying events in 1959, not unusual for the era. That season also featured the first Daytona 500, and it certainly delivered a memorable finish. Petty was in the middle of a three-wide formation with a lapped car and eventual runner-up Johnny Beauchamp. Without the benefit of modern technology, it took three days to determine that Petty, not Beauchamp, had won.

Petty would use the victory to launch his title run. In his 42 starts (yes, the eventual champion didn’t participate in two events that year), he won 11 times and finished in the top 10 in all but seven races. Unlike the other three-time champions, Petty won his third near the end of his career, as 1960 would be his final full-time season.

The next three-timer is a man who needs minimal introduction as a winner of 105 Cup races, David Pearson. Pearson claimed his three titles in a span of just four years, winning in 1966, 1968 and 1969. His final year was a clinic in consistency, in which he not only finished 42 of his 51 races, but all 42 finishes were in the top five.

For Pearson, his lack of additional championships was due to his frequent part-time schedule. After 1969, he started fewer than three quarters of the races every year for the rest of his career, finishing better than 13th in points only twice.

Cale Yarborough took note of Pearson cramming three titles into a four-year span and figured he would take it a step further. After winning the crown in 1976 and 1977, Yarborough capitalized on Richard Petty‘s first winless season in 18 years to secure his third straight triumph.

He totaled 28 wins in 90 races during his three-year domination of the Cup Series. But like Pearson and so many others in that era, he simply didn’t race full time for very long. Yarborough transitioned to a part-time role beginning in 1981, ending his tenure as a championship contender. Like Pearson, he continued to run well, winning 14 races as a part-time participant, including two consecutive Daytona 500s.

The manner in which Darrell Waltrip won his first two titles is rather similar to the drivers we’ve already touched on, with sheer dominance being the driving force. But that wasn’t the case in 1985.

Bill Elliott won just about everything in 1985. He scored his first Daytona 500 victory and won the initial offering of the Winston Million by notching his 10th win of the year in just the 20th event at Darlington Raceway’s Southern 500. With only eight races to go, Elliott led Waltrip by 208 points.

But after Darlington, things for Awesome Bill were decidedly less awesome. Over the next four races, Waltrip finished first, second, second and 14th, while Elliott finished 12th, 20th, 17th and 30th. This resulted in Waltrip chopping the lead down each week, finding himself atop the standings after Elliott’s four-race meltdown.

Elliott won the penultimate race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and found himself just 20 points out of the lead heading to the finale at Riverside International Raceway. But while Waltrip finished seventh, Elliott staggered home in 31st, handing DW his third and final Cup Series title. Though competing for 15 more years, Waltrip never won another Cup title after he left Junior Johnson & Associates, the team he and Yarborough both won their three titles with.

Tony Stewart holds plenty of records from his storied career, but there’s one in particular that no other Cup legend can claim. He is the only driver to win a championship in both a full season and playoff points system. Stewart hoisted his first big trophy after 2002, then followed it up with a playoff-era title in 2005.

But in 2011, he added yet another distinction to his resume, becoming the first driver to win a championship on a tiebreaker.

At that time, a driver didn’t have to win to be eligible for the 10-race Chase for the Championship. They just had to be in the top 12 in points after the first 26 races, which Tony was. He was winless through those 26 starts, but that would change in a hurry. Stewart won the first two races of the playoffs and would go on to claim back-to-back wins again just over a month later.

Carl Edwards came into the finale just three points ahead of Stewart. Edwards had one win to Stewart’s four, which gave Stewart the advantage in the event of a tie. This meant that in almost any scenario, Carl simply had to finish ahead of Tony.

Edwards wound up finishing second in the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but unfortunately for him, the winner was Stewart. The final standings were a dead heat, but Stewart picked up his third and final Cup Series title by having five wins to Carl’s one.

Logano may finish his career with three titles, or he may continue to add to the total in the years to come. Like it or not, his unconventional path to winning a third championship certainly makes for an intriguing bit of history and a pretty good story.

Much like the five other drivers with three Cup Series championships.