Joey Logano fires back at critics of playoff format after winning third NASCAR championship

Don’t discredit Joey Logano and his three NASCAR Cup Series championships, because he doesn’t want to hear any of it. Joey Logano won four races this season, five including the All-Star Race, and put on a clutch run in the postseason.

While Joey Logano is celebrating, there is a contingent of fans who are hypercritical. They don’t believe this format rewards the best. You hear it all the time about the season-long points format.

During his postrace press conference, Logano addressed the fans who hate on the NASCAR Playoffs. He is a three-time champion. Once is by chance, twice is a fluke, but three times? Now that is a pattern.

Matt Weaver of Sportsnaut asked Logano if he wanted to say anything to those fans. At first, this was his response.

“No. I got nothing to say to them. I’ve got a pretty sweet trophy right now. I’m gonna be laughing all the way to the bank.”

In a follow-up, Joey Logano went on a rant. He railed against the Winston Cup points purists.

“You know, to your point about, you know championships and what it is,” Logano continued. “The only reason why they don’t say this about other sports is because they didn’t change the playoff system [in those sports]. But the playoff system in other sports is not much different than what this is. You can have a great regular season, it seeds you better for the playoffs, right? Now that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to go all the way to the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup Finals or the NBA Finals.

“It doesn’t matter. It might help you, and it’s the same way in NASCAR. The way we have the rules now is that you set yourself up much better, right? You look at the way we came into the playoffs versus the 5, the 45. You know, those guys that scored, you know, 15 playoff points for winning the regular season championship. That’s three wins worth of points in three races. That’s hard to make up that amount of points. And they have the same opportunity to go out there and win and move on to the next round.

“So for someone to say this isn’t real it’s a bunch of bullshit, in my opinion. That’s wrong. This is something that everyone knows the rules when the season starts. And you know, we figured out how to do it the best and figured out how to win. It’s what our team’s been able to do for the last three years.”

Joey Logano was passionate in his response. To his credit, this is a now three-time champion. We should be celebrating this accomplishment, we haven’t seen one since Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart.

The champ went on with his diatribe.

“I don’t like people talking that way, you know what I mean? Because if the rules were the old way, we’d play it out differently, wouldn’t we?” Logano said. “So I just think that’s just a bunch of hearsay back there and people just gotta accept what the times are, times change, right? I don’t know if you have a lot of the moments that we have today without the playoff system that we have, right? … For people to complain it makes me mad. It makes me so frustrated to hear that.

“Because golly man, it is awesome. Like remove, I watch the Xfinity Series, obviously, and the Truck Series … But I watch those races as a fan. Whether it’s from the booth or it’s I’m just on TV like I did last night. That’s entertaining stuff. Like, I’m glued to my TV, especially a lot more during the playoffs than I am during the regular season. What’s wrong with that?”

Joey Logano is right. This is Year 11 of the Championship 4 playoff format. At some point, people have to let go of the past and appreciate the way the racing has changed. Three times a champion does not happen by mistake.