Joey Logano admits to frustration on being the face of NASCAR’s divisive format

Joey Logano recently expressed his frustration with being the poster boy for everything wrong with the NASCAR playoff format. The Team Penske driver, who has won two Cup titles in the last three seasons, also explained why the playoff format works for the sport.

In the last few seasons, there has been a considerable amount of criticism against the current format from fans and insiders. In fact, NASCAR is currently reviewing the format with a committee that would decide whether the format is to be tweaked or more radically changed for the future.

It’s worth mentioning that Joey Logano winning the 2024 Cup title also became a big talking point in this context. Logano’s solitary win at Nashville in the regular season was enough to take him to the playoffs. But once the playoffs began, the #22 team shifted up their performances and scored three more wins to secure Logano’s third championship.

Recently, Jordan Bianchi asked Logano whether he feels tired of being used as an example of the cons of the playoff format.

“It pisses me off. Absolutely. Ticks me off all the time. But I’m also like fine, change it. We’ll go win it again. That’s got to be your attitude with it. I mean I think it I mean most likely right there there’ll be some kind of adjustment more than likely at some point. You just see what it is and you adapt to that and then you do what it takes to win that.” [1:22:10]

Joey Logano further claimed that if NASCAR changes the format, and he ends up winning another title in that, that would be ‘the best one.’ He claimed that he likes the ‘told you so’ moment, which motivates him a lot.

Logano claimed he has come to love the pressure, and the current NASCAR format does exactly that.

Joey Logano doesn’t want NASCAR to lose the essence of the spsportregardless of a format change.

Speaking further on the subject of NASCAR format, Joey Logano said that regardless of the changes in it, the sport shouldn’t lose its ‘do or die moments.’

He claimed those moments are consistent in all the sports and are a big reason why fans love to watch, regardless of whether it is the NFL, the NHL, or the NBA.

“They all have moments where it’s like you perform or you’re out. You don’t want to see, okay, to win the championship, I got to just finish fifth over and over and over and over and over again. I want to see where you have to win. What are you willing to do? You’re desperate. What are you gonna do? I want to see desperate people. I want to see desperate people do desperate things. As a fan, that’s what I want to watch,” Logano described. [1:23:40]

He claimed that NASCAR currently has such moments in the sport, and it cannot lose that.