Joey Logano the epitome of 'Penske Perfect' as he takes his 2nd NASCAR Cup crown
Editor's note: Full race results, final season standings and both race and championship notes follow at the end of this column.
PHOENIX – Excellence is an expectation, not a quest, when you drive for Team Penske.
Nobody had to reinforce that with Joey Logano when he rolled into Phoenix last week going into Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race. He spewed confidence. He KNEW he would win his second title.
The previous two races might have belied that because the results were hardly the mark of a championship team. He finished 18th at Homestead and sixth at Martinsville. But once Logano climbed into his No. 22 Ford at Phoenix, three weeks after he’d secured a berth in the Championship Four with his victory at Las Vegas, he had ’em right where he wanted ’em.
He told his team, “We’ve got them, now we put our foot on them.”
Logano won the pole position Saturday and led from the drop of the green flag Sunday. Aside from a segment when he fell from the lead while saving fuel getting to the end of Stage 2, he raced with clean air most of the day.
Logano passed Chase Briscoe to retake the lead with 28 laps remaining and, with teammate Ryan Blaney getting past Briscoe a short time later, Team Penske pulled off a 1-2 finish.
It completed a sweep of championships for team owner Roger Penske in the major American racing series this year after driver Will Power won the IndyCar Series title for Team Penske in September.
“We’ve tried for 31 years, so it’s about time,” Penske said about pulling off the NASCAR-IndyCar 'double'. “For us to have two championships in the same year, that’s what we’re here for. That’s the goal we have every year.”
NASCAR President Steve Phelps presents the Bill France NASCAR Cup Series Championship trophy to Joey Logano in victory lane after Logano won the 2022 championship at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
Team Penske has won three NASCAR Cup and 17 IndyCar championships, 18 Indy 500s, three Daytona 500s, the Daytona 24-hour race and the 12 hours of Sebring. And Penske will field two Porsche 963s next year at LeMans.
Sunday, the team was the definition of “Penske Perfect.”
“Mr. Penske’s group had us covered all day,” said Ross Chastain, who finished second in the season standings after a third-place finish in the race. Christopher Bell’s 10th-place finish left him third in the standings, and Chase Elliott was fourth after a 28th-place finish, his title hopes disappearing with a bump from Chastain and spin into the inside wall on a mid-race restart.
In truth, Penske’s drivers had them all covered for much more than 312 laps Sunday. Logano led 187 of the 312 laps and Blaney led 109 laps. It was a performance three weeks in the making.
When Logano won at Las Vegas on October 16, it secured a berth in the final four. It’s not like the team paid no attention to the next two races, at Homestead and Martinsville, but the focus clearly was three weeks later in Phoenix.
When you give any top-level team a few extra weeks to prepare, whether it’s football or racing, it will be tough to beat. Logano felt it, and he wasn’t afraid to say it or show it.
“When these playoffs started this season he was on his A game,” crew chief Paul Wolfe said of Logano. “He was focused and determined that we were going to win this championship. That’s the way he would talk when he would come into the shop. There was no doubt in his mind that we were the favorites and we were going to get it done.”
Logano also pulled off something that hadn’t been done in 53 years. He became the first Ford driver to win two Cup titles since David Pearson in 1968 and 1969.
“When we won in Vegas, we sat down Monday and started coming up with a bunch of meeting agendas – reviewing pit stops, reviewing rolling times on pit road,” Logano said. “We knew we had a fast race car … but we knew details were going to be the difference in winning and losing.
"We had the advantage of those 2½ weeks to work together. This is all we thought about. Any other distraction, you put aside (because) you can’t waste the opportunity that’s in front of us. We made sure there was no stone unturned in preparing for this race.”
It wasn’t false bravado when Logano sat with reporters on Thursday and proclaimed himself the man to beat.
“You can’t fake confidence,” he said. “I’d never felt more ready.”
Sunday, he was.
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