As Joey Logano won championship after championship without scoring the most total points in NASCAR's Championhip 4 era, there were always two groups of fans.
One argued that his championships were fake and that he wasn't a deserving champion, given the flawed nature of NASCAR's knockout playoff format. The other hung their hat on the fact that everybody played by the same rules, and everybody knew the rules going into each season. Logano and his team simply did it best.
Make no mistake; Logano did, under the format utilized at the time, earn his three championships in 2018, 2022, and 2024. "Deserve" is irrelevant.
But it's also fairly obvious that, from top to bottom, he wasn't the best driver during any of those seasons.
No matter, though, because the fans who clung to the narrative of "it's the same for everyone!" insisted that the No. 22 team would adopt and adapt to the new format and continue to find ways to win, even though the new format is based exclusively on points and features just one post-regular season reset, an entirely points-based reset, rather than four based on victories and playoff points.
After all, for as much as the other fans who continuously claimed "undeserving champion!" suggested that Logano was merely a playoff merchant, he would ironically be a four-time champion, not just a three-time champion, had the new format been in place from 2014 to 2025.
Yes, even without having ever led the series in total points scored during the first 17 seasons of his career.
But here we are nine races into the 2026 season, and Logano is looking every bit like the same driver who struggled his way through each of his championship-winning seasons and simply won at the right time to claim the ultimate prize.
Weren't he and the No. 22 team supposed to magically find some speed to dominate the new system?
Logano is 14th in the point standings with just three finishes higher than 15th. In two of the four most recent races, he has finished 30th or worse on outright pace, or specifically, lack thereof, multiple laps down.
We get it; teams could afford mulligans under the old system, and Team Penske knew exactly where Logano needed to be good, and where he could afford to be subpar, to make it count in the grand scheme of things. Aside from the Championship 4 era record three championships, the fact that he made the Championship 4 in six out of 12 years was a stellar achievement.
They gamed the system better than anybody, and they had a driver capable of delivering when it mattered most. There was nothing inherently undeserving or wrong about it, and it's why the questions of past championship validity are comical at best.
But that never meant they were intentionally hiding something elsewhere. It never meant they were going to show up in 2026 and dominate, just because that's what the new system is designed to reward.
Now we're all starting to see confirmation of the team's true performance, and it's quite literally no different than it's been as a whole in recent years.
The main difference now is that simply winning at the right time is no longer capable of serving as a bandage that possesses the same value as a Bill France Cup.
While the season is still young and a turnaround is not out of the question, it's hard to point to any recent string of success, even during his championship-winning seasons, to suggest that the No. 22 team has what it takes to become a consistent frontrunner.
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