Analysis: Why you can never count Joey Logano out — no matter the odds

“Joey Logano has advanced another round in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.” Those words are music to the ears of the No. 22 team, including crew chief Paul Wolfe -- whose gamble to have Logano pit for newer tires than high-leverage rival Ross Chastain with 11 laps remaining on Sunday at the Roval paid huge dividends. But judging from the boos raining down during Logano’s post-race interview, many fans weren’t exactly thrilled with the result. And it certainly wasn't what the other seven drivers in the Round of 8 wanted to hear. In fact, Logano is just about the last competitor they’re eager to take on, given his status as defending Cup Series champion -- and winner of two of the past three Cup titles -- with the track where he’s the winningest active driver (Phoenix Raceway) looming as the championship site again on Nov. 2. So Chastain would have done the rest of the field a huge favor by knocking Logano out of contention. (And he almost did, crossing the finish line backward in true ‘Melon Man’ style.) But he didn’t, and now Logano is in the hunt again for career championship No. 4, which would tie him with Jeff Gordon for the fourth-most in Cup Series history. The good news for Joey’s rivals is that he starts the Round of 8 from a position of weakness. He ranks last among the active playoff drivers in the standings, sitting 24 points below the cutline and 10 points below Chase Briscoe, the next-lowest ranked Round of 8 driver. According to our NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs forecast model, which uses projected Driver Ratings to simulate the rest of the schedule 10,000 times and tracks who advances, there’s just a 26.2 percent chance we see Logano back in the Championship 4 for the third time in four years. What’s driving such low odds for such a feared driver? One of the problems is that, outside of winning one of the next three races, the paths for Joey to advance are fairly narrow. While a win would -- by definition -- send Logano to the next round, there aren’t many other scenarios that carry high odds of advancing, according to our simulations:

Barring a win, a trio of top 10s would give a 72 percent chance of advancing ... but that only happened in 4 percent of the simulations, so it’s a big ask for something that’s not even a surefire Championship 4 ticket. Meanwhile, if he simply has two top 10s, the advancement odds drop to 29 percent. And although consistency over the next three races is a good thing unto itself, a high floor can only get him so far: Three finishes in the teens or better (again without a win) would only produce a 35 percent chance of moving on, and simply avoiding any truly bad finishes only carries an 18 percent chance. (And if he only scores a single top 10 or less, you can pretty much forget about him making the Championship 4.) So while we’re not saying Joey is in “must-win” territory to start the Round of 8, he’s not far from it, either. The good news, however, is that Logano is heading to a series of tracks where he’s as good as just about anyone. Among all places where he’s run at least five career Cup races, Las Vegas (100.8) and Martinsville (96.8) rank 1-2 for him in career Driver Rating. He ranks fourth among active full-time drivers at the latter track -- trailing just Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney -- and second only to Kyle Larson at the former, where he’s won four times.

Talladega is less of a Logano speciality in terms of Driver Rating, but that’s because it’s not really a speciality for anyone. (Or at least, just a select few can consistently ride the draft to predictably elite results.) But even there, Joey has won a trio of races -- albeit none since 2018. In other words, a win to punch Logano’s Championship 4 ticket is hardly off the table, even if the odds for any winning driver (save for SVG at a road course) are never all that high. And the other factor working in his favor? Like it or not, Logano is legitimately a clutch driver in the playoffs.

In his 12 seasons as a playoff driver, only twice (2019 and 2023) did Logano have a lower Adjusted Points+ index and/or Driver Rating while actively pursuing the championship than he did during that year’s regular season. And on average, he’s posted an Adjusted Points+ index 32 points higher and a Driver Rating 5.2 points higher while active in the playoffs than he did in the regular season. Among drivers with at least 20 races while actively in the championship hunt in the current playoff format (since 2014), Logano is one of only seven with an average Driver Rating in the triple digits (100.2) and his 208 mark ranks second only to Kevin Harvick (211) in Adjusted Points+ index over that same sample. In other words, Logano is perennially a good regular-season driver who dials up his greatness in the races that matter most. And with three of those coming up -- at some of his best tracks -- we should all be on the lookout for more of Joey’s patented late-season heroics. Sure, his odds for another title might be long at the moment, but he has spoiled our playoff prognosticating and made us all look silly before. That’s why the other drivers were not-so-secretly hoping his title chances would be officially buried last week: They know that as long as the No. 22 Ford is still alive in the playoffs, he’s always going to be a threat to snatch the trophy away in the end.