Throughout NASCAR history, the champions of the sport have always been able to point to a statistic or two that made the difference on their path to the championship.
For drivers such as Lee Petty and Matt Kenseth, average finish and top-10 finishes paved the way for a quiet, yet consistent journey to the championship stage.
For others, such as Kyle Larson in 2021, it was dominance in the forms of race wins and laps led.
Enter stage left, Joey Logano, who led the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series field in exactly zero major statistical categories.
Logano’s average finish? 17.1, the worst of any Cup Series champion over 75 years of competition. He finished top 10 in just 36.1% of races and led just 414 laps — numbers that, even in previous years, were not championship caliber.
Enter stage right, the NASCAR playoffs, the catalyst and mastermind behind Logano’s miracle run to a third NASCAR title.