Joey Logano completed his Cinderella story Sunday afternoon by holding off teammate Ryan Blaney and winning the NASCAR Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix Raceway and his third career title in Avondale, Arizona.
After passing William Byron by going from fifth to first in one lap following a restart with 54 laps to go, Logano kept his No. 22 Team Penske Ford out front and went on to win by 0.33 seconds over defending champion Blaney, giving owner Roger Penske his third straight title.
Logano made it into the championship playoffs after Alex Bowman was disqualified after the Southern 500 at Darlington.
He parlayed that into his third title — also doing it in 2018 and 2022 — and became the 10th racer all-time to win at least three Cup titles.
Byron, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell completed the top five in the race that featured four cautions. Title contender Tyler Reddick was sixth.
Carson Hocevar finished 18th and earned Rookie of the Year honors.
Two-time champion Kyle Busch was 21st and failed to win over the 36 races, ending his NASCAR-record streak of 19 consecutive seasons with at least one win.
In his final start as a full-time driver, 2017 Cup winner Martin Truex Jr. brought them to green from the pole position at the Arizona desert’s 1-mile track, but teammate Ty Gibbs created the first caution when he scrubbed the wall in Turn 4 in his No. 54 then smacked the Turn 2 wall hard on Lap 2 in a single-car incident.
Logano powered past Truex on the restart and set the pace in the 312-lap event to close 2024. Soon, all four of the title contenders were running inside the top 10 before the halfway point of 60-lap Stage 1, which Logano won after leading 54 laps.
However, Logano’s pit crew had difficulties on the right side during the pit stop, gridding him fifth when the group led by Chase Elliott left pit road with Byron and Blaney running in third and fourth.
In the race’s oddest moment as the field was about to restart, the Toyota pace car turned late onto pit road and made hard contact with the sand-filled yellow barrels abutting the beginning of the pit road outer wall. That wreck created a red-flag period.
A week after being penalized for wall-riding on the final turns at Martinsville and eliminated from title contention, Bell had the look of a champion on the rare Champ 4 weekend when Joe Gibbs Racing did not have an entry among the quartet of Cup seekers.
A day after saying he felt wronged by NASCAR and “cheated” out of a title chance, Bell had a strong No. 20 JGR Toyota for most of Stage 2.
However, Blaney showed his strength by moving past Bell in the final laps as Penske Fords pulled off the segment sweep in the first 185 circuits around the slightly banked layout.
With Bell leading following Stage 2’s conclusion, Blaney, Byron and Logano occupied the next three spots, while Reddick slotted ninth with 117 laps left.
–Field Level Media
