When NASCAR finally announced the end of the "win and in", knockout style playoff format that had been in place from 2014 to 2025, most fans pointed to Team Penske's Joey Logano as the driver who would be hurt the most.
Logano is a three-time champion, despite having never led the series in full-season points. He was "the other guy" in the battle with the "Big 3" of Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Martin Truex Jr. in 2018, and despite entering the playoffs with only one win, he won the title.
In 2022, he again got hot at the right time, and in 2024, he only qualified for the playoffs because of a fuel mileage, five-overtime win over Zane Smith, who was last in the point standings at the time.
He was then eliminated in the round of 12, only to be saved by Alex Bowman's disqualification. He won his way to the Championship 4 and won the season finale to secure his third title. And despite his playoff hot streak, he still didn't finish top 10 in total points.
Of course, many argued that Logano, Paul Wolfe, and the No. 22 team would figure out how to game the new system as well, just as they did under the old format to reach the Championship 4 six times in 12 years.
Early on, it looked like those fans were going to have to eat crow.
There were races in which the No. 22 Ford looked like a satellite Rick Ware Racing entry at best. Logano spent months below the top 16 cut line. The question was no longer whether he'd get hot and win the championship under the new format, but whether or not he'd qualify for the playoffs at all.
But now?
Logano put on a career performance at North Wilkesboro Speedway to secure his first win in over a year. He then backed it up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where Team Penske was not expected to be particularly competitive, with a third place finish, tying his second-best result of the year.
Now the series is set to head to Iowa Speedway, Richmond Raceway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Daytona International Speedway to wrap up the regular season, four tracks at which he's historically been strong.
It's starting to feel like 2018, 2022, and 2024 all over again. And ironically, the new format actually underscores that.
It feels like that because of the new format, not in spite of it.
Under the new playoff format, NASCAR is set to reset the point standings just once, rather than four times, and that reset is set to occur at the end of the regular season. The 16 playoff drivers are simply set to be the 16 drivers who finish the regular season inside the top 16 in the point standings, and they are set to be seeded based strictly on regular season points.
As it stands, Logano is 341 points out of the regular season championship lead. Provided he qualifies for the playoffs, which seems like a given at this point, he will be no more than 100 points out of the lead, and over the final four weeks of the regular season, he still has a chance to shrink that gap.
Currently 13th, he'd start the playoffs 85 points out of the lead. So while there may be no more "win and in", that's effectively a 256-point boost when it comes to winning a fourth championship in the past five even-numbered years.
And with victories now paying an extra 15 points, winning a playoff race might well mean just as much now as it did during the "win and in" era. Getting hot at the right time is still getting hot at the right time.
It's still crucial, and there isn't a single driver who has done a better job of it over the past decade than Logano has.
While the top four have distanced themselves from the rest of the pack, Logano is only 96 points out of fifth. It seems like a huge deficit to overcome in four races, but four races ago, he was 31 points below the cut line. Now he's 65 points ahead of the cut line, marking a 96-point swing in four races.
If Logano can end the regular season in the top 10, riding anything close to the wave of momentum he currently has going for him, it would not be surprising to see him classified as one of the championship favorites.
We've seen this story before, and we've seen it multiple times. While you can thank the old format all you want to, the fact is that we might well be seeing the start of a new chapter under the new format too.
Can you imagine, after just one year, how loud the outrage from same NASCAR fans who welcomed the new system would be if Logano is a four-time champion come November?
I'm sure it would make those 30th-place spring races well worth it for the No. 22 crew.
The NASCAR Cup Series had off this past weekend for the first time since Easter in early April. This weekend's Iowa Corn 350 is set to kick off a stretch of 14 consecutive race weekends to conclude the 2026 season. USA Network is set to provide live coverage from Iowa Speedway starting at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, August 9. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss it!
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