NASCAR insider: Joey Logano's championship win 'will change the playoff format'

After Joey Logano’s controversial championship victory to cap off the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, Jeff Gluck believes it’ll lead to the playoff format being adjusted.

On the latest episode of The Teardown, Gluck reacted to Logano’s win at Phoenix Raceway with fellow NASCAR insider Jordan Bianchi, where he made his point. Evidently, Gluck believes Logano’s victory after lying dormant basically all season long will force NASCAR’s hand, or they risk alienating their fanbase.

“I think that Joey Logano’s win will change the playoff format,” Gluck stated. “I think that Joey Logano winning in this system has exposed a flaw similar to how NASCAR felt when Matt Kenseth won that year, and they will say — NASCAR will look at it, after Kenseth won in 2003, they looked at it and said, ‘This is not what we want.’ After Jimmie [Johnson] won so many titles in the ten-race Chase, NASCAR said, ‘Again, this is not what we want.’ I believe that NASCAR will reach a point where they — after, you know, after giving Logano his credit, as we just did, where they say, ‘I don’t think this is what we want for our champion.’ Look, Steve O’Donnell said on Friday in the state of the sport, ‘The playoffs are here to stay, but we’re open to tweaks. We’re open to changing the points.’

“I don’t know that we know what’s going to happen. I don’t know that we know how that will go, or how to do that, what NASCAR will decide. But I just don’t think that year after year, you can have a situation where, ‘Well, somebody just got hot.'”

In making a case for the current format, Gluck’s podcast partner Bianchi has likened NASCAR’s playoffs to that of the NFL or NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, but it’s evident the analyst doesn’t believe that works well when crowning a champion in the world of motorsports.

“You’re going to say, ‘It’s just like the NFL Wild Card. It’s just like the Patriots losing in the Super Bowl. It’s just like a team getting hot in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.’ That is such — I’m so tired of people using that as why some sort of — that’s a one-on-one situation,” Gluck added. “This would be like the Niners and the Chiefs are in the Super Bowl, and Patrick Mahomes is running down the field, and he gets tripped up by a player on the Carolina Panthers, who also happened to be on the field, and changed the outcome of the race.

“Zane Smith had a big impact potentially on this championship. The way the caution came out, when it came out, the restart, all that stuff. Like, that was — he is not part of the playoffs. So, in motorsports, I personally don’t even think playoffs work. Now, I’m open to having them, because I understand why they want to have excitement at the end of the year, bunch it up, but there’s got to be more of a sample size. I think there’s got to be — there’s not the same field every week in motorsports. If you want to just take one track and say, ‘This is how we’re going to — this is what we’re going to do for our champion,’ over and over again, I just don’t think that’s reflective of the entire season.

“All the way, you know, you guys that listen to this podcast, all season long, we talked about who’s hot, who’s going to make the final four, who’s the championship contender, and ultimately, none of it mattered. None of it mattered, because we were writing off Joey Logano all year long.”

Jeff Gluck’s passionate plea will ring true to many fans of NASCAR, and he makes some salient points. Regardless, Joey Logano is this season’s champion, and it’s something that nobody will be able to take away from him moving forward.