Joey Logano's Las Vegas win might be best-case scenario for NASCAR fans

Seven days before he won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to punch his ticket to his sixth career NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4, Team Penske's Joey Logano was eliminated from championship contention when 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick rallied late to take away the eighth and final round of 8 spot from him at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.

Or so he – and everyone else – thought.

Hours after the Charlotte race, the driver of the No. 22 Ford effectively inherited the round of 8 spot which was initially earned by Hendrick Motorsports' Alex Bowman when it was found that Bowman's No. 48 Chevrolet was underweight.

Bowman was disqualified, and the points he lost because of NASCAR's decision knocked him below Logano in the standings.

So the two-time series champion advanced after all.

Logano is only 15th in total points scored this season, while the other seven round of 8 drivers are all inside the top seven. On the flip side, Bowman advancing would have meant that all eight would have been inside the top eight.

Logano, who opened up the round of 8 in eighth place in the standings due to having the lowest remaining playoff point total, only made it to the playoffs by winning a five-overtime race at Nashville Superspeedway in June.

Had he not won that race, he would not have gotten into the postseason on points. Three winless drivers ahead of him in the standings failed to qualify for the playoffs.

But Logano had qualified for all five Championship 4s in even-numbered years since the introduction of the modern playoff format in 2014, and in 2018, 2020, and 2022, he did so by winning the round of 8 opener.

So of course he won the round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday.

In doing so, he locked up yet another Championship 4 spot in an even-numbered year – and for the fourth even year in a row, he became the first driver to do so.

Even with his South Point 400 win, Logano is still only 15th in total points scored in what has been, by pretty much every metric other than wins, his worst season since joining Team Penske in 2013.

Everyone knows that there has long been a debate about the playoff format. Fans have argued against playoffs since they were introduced in 2004, and those complaints grew louder in 2014, when the modern round-by-round elimination format was introduced.

I've long said that there is nothing inherently unfair about the playoff format. Playoff spots are earned, not deserved, and everybody plays by the same rules. Logano earned his Championship 4 spot, and that hasn't changed.

Even without a ton of points, and specifically with far fewer points than any of the other seven remaining contenders, he got to the round of 8, and he did what he needed to do once he got there to advance further.

There is no argument for retrospectively taking away anybody's playoff berth because of a rule change that some argue should have been made.

But the fact that it was Logano, of all drivers, who punched his ticket to the Championship 4, one week after he was literally eliminated, is only going to paint the playoff format in an even more negative light moving forward.

The storm was brewing, and it hit almost exactly as many expected.

There were fans who were, whether jokingly, ironically, or seriously (or a combination of the three), hoping Logano would win at Las Vegas, just to paint the playoff format in an increasingly negative light.

Had it been Logano disqualified and Bowman who advanced, that reaction would have undoubtedly been different, not just because of who they are but because of their season-long point totals.

But the fact is that a disqualification, even though it was for a fairly straight-forward, non-controversial, and clear-cut infraction, opened the door for a once-eliminated 15th place driver to become the first driver to lock himself into the championship round.

And now that 15th place driver is indeed locked into the Championship 4.

Is there a solution to make the modern playoff format better and reward season-long success to a greater degree? I'm sure there are dozens of ways to make it "better", but every single one of them is still going to cause a significant portion of the fanbase to complain.

There is no perfect way to do it. Even a season-long points format would undoubtedly generate gripes these days, specifically since stage racing enables drivers other than race winners to score the most points any given weekend.

Case in point: Sunday's race. Runner-up Christopher Bell of Joe Gibbs Racing was the top overall scorer, not Logano.

NASCAR created the modern format with the goal of creating a "game seven" moment each year, and from that perspective, it has been nothing short of a success.

The point is that Logano's latest Hail Mary is only going to bring that discussion to the forefront: is that really how a championship should be decided across a 36-race season?

For those against the modern playoff format, Logano winning on Sunday might very well have been, in a roundabout way, the best possible outcome.

There are two races remaining on the round of 8 schedule to decide which three drivers join Joey Logano in the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway three Sundays from now. Tune in to NBC at 2:30 p.m. ET this Sunday, October 27 for the live broadcast of the Straight Talk Wireless 400 from Homestead-Miami Speedway. Start a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss it!