Throughout NASCAR’s history, the sport’s champions have always been able to cite one or two statistics that made the difference on their path to the championship.

For drivers such as Lee Petty and Matt Kenseth, an average finish and a top 10 paved the way for a quiet but consistent journey to the championship stage.

For others, like Kyle Larson in 2021, it was dominance in the form of race wins and laps led.

Enter stage left, Joey Logano, who led the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series field exactly zero major statistical categories.

Logano’s average finish? 17.1, the worst of any Cup Series champion in 75 years of competition. He finished in the top 10 in just 36.1 percent of races and led just 414 laps – numbers that even in previous years were not championship caliber.

Enter the scene right, the NASCAR playoffs, the catalyst and mastermind behind Logano’s miraculous run to a third NASCAR title.

It was thanks to the playoffs and the playoffs alone that Logano even had the chance to compete for the championship after a fuel consumption victory in Nashville. It was via the disqualification of Alex Bowman after the race at the Charlotte Roval which allowed him to reach the round of 16. And it was another fuel economy win in Las Vegas that gave him both a Championship 4 spot and two extra weeks to prepare. the final race in Phoenix.

And yes, when the laps mattered most, it was Logano who etched his name in history as a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.

But make no mistake: Logano’s three championships are not the same three championships won by David Pearson, Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Tony Stewart or Cale Yarborough.

The following words are not meant to be an indictment of Logano, who simply followed the rules, but an indictment of NASCAR’s playoff system, which just crowned — at least from a statistical standpoint — the worst champion in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series.

The definition of a championship-caliber season has been completely lost.

Decimated. Disintegrated. Destroyed. Whatever adjective you want to use, the concept remains clear: NASCAR can no longer decide what a championship-caliber driver is.

A six-win season for Kyle Larson? Not good enough. A Christopher Bell year where he had more top-five finishes (15) than Logano had top-10 finishes (13)? Not good enough.

It was Larson who led four times as many laps as Logano and Chase Elliott who finished the year averaging nearly 5.5 positions better than Logano. It was another Championship 4 driver, William Byron, who finished in the top three 11 times, only half as many as Logano finished in the top 10.

But on Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t Elliott, Bell, Byron or Larson who lifted the Bill France Cup.

The days of the classic season-long Winston Cup points format – in which Logano would have finished 11th, by the way – are long gone – deciding the champion over 36 races. Gone are the days of the 10-race chase, in which, once again, the accumulation of points determined the champion.

Modern championships are won because drivers and teams win the races they should.

Granted, Logano and the No. 22 team were opportunistic, but his third title could become a defining moment for NASCAR – and not a good one.

If a subpar season is enough to win a championship, the definition of a championship-caliber NASCAR season is as clear as mud.

Congratulations, Joey Logano: You’ve managed to smash the NASCAR playoff format to smithereens.