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Team Penske’s Joey Logano won his third NASCAR Cup Series Championship in six years, holding off teammate and 2023 champion Ryan Blaney in the process.
Ford continued its NASCAR dominance by winning a third straight NASCAR Cup Series driver championship after Joey Logano outlasted Team Penske teammate and last season’s champion Ryan Blaney to take the final race of the 2024 season Sunday afternoon at Phoenix Raceway.
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Logano is the first driver to win three titles with Ford and the 10th in NASCAR history.
For Logano, it marked his third career championship and second in the last three years.
“I love the playoffs,” said Logano, who won his previous championships in 2018 and 2022. “What a race and what a Team Penske battle there at the end. I had a good restart and was able to get in front of [Blaney)]. He had a lot of long run speed there and that was all I had to hold him off. We have three of them. That’s really special.”
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Logano put himself in position for the victory with a move from sixth to first after a late-race restart.
Logano, who qualified second, won the first stage and led twice for 107 laps overall, but it was the move he made on a late-race restart with 54 laps to go that proved to be the defining moment. After pitting for fuel and tires, Logano found himself sixth in line for the restart and behind championship contenders William Byron and Blaney. But when the green flag dropped, Logano immediately found the lane he needed and passed all five cars in front of him in the span of one lap.
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Ford has now won seven of the last nine championships in NASCAR’s top three series.
This continues a streak that has seen Ford win at least two NASCAR series championships in each of the last three years. Overall, the manufacturer has won seven of the last nine titles in NASCAR’s top three series combined, dating back to Logano’s Cup championship in 2022.
“This just keeps building the momentum for our program,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Performance Motorsports. “We feel like we've been working really hard for a really long time to build it, and it's certainly starting to pay off with the investment in the people and the tools and the partners.”
Ty Majeski dominated Friday night’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race – a victory that earned him his first series title and the third straight Truck Series championship for Ford. Majeski led 132 of 150 laps at the one-mile Phoenix Raceway, and when the race-ending 27-lap green-flag run finally came, he pulled away to a 3.945-second victory over Corey Heim, who recovered from a restart violation to finish second.
In the NASCAR Xfinity Series on Saturday, Cole Custer finished eighth in his bid to repeat as champion.
1965 – Ned Jarrett
1968 – David Pearson
1969 – David Pearson
1988 – Bill Elliott
1992 – Alan Kulwicki
1999 – Dale Jarrett
2003 – Matt Kenseth
2004 – Kurt Busch
2018 – Joey Logano
2022 – Joey Logano
2023 – Ryan Blaney
2024 – Joey Logano
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