When NASCAR announced that the playoff format would be changing, with no more "win and in", no more three-race playoff rounds, and no more Championship 4, many fans believed that Joey Logano would be one of the big losers from the shift.
Logano won championships in 2018, 2022, and 2024, despite not scoring the most points across any of those seasons. In fact, in 2024, he was only 15th in regular season points, and despite his playoff surge, he didn't even finish inside the top 10.
Yet for as much as many fans claimed he was merely a "playoff merchant", he would actually be a four-time champion, rather than a three-time champion, had the new "Chase" postseason format been in place during the 12-year stretch which saw the previous format utilized.
It was largely assumed that Logano and the No. 22 team were simply gaming the system better than anybody else and would do the same this year, even with the focus having shifted to total points above all else.
That hasn't been the case.
Team Penske have struggled as a whole, aside from Ryan Blaney's ability to be quick from time to time. While you can always point to misfortune, like Logano being collected in another wreck at Talladega Superspeedway or Sunday's pit road incident with Cole Custer at Texas Motor Speedway, the No. 22 Ford has been nowhere for most of the year on outright pace.
Twice in four races, he finished 30th or worse on raw speed. Sandwiched between that 33rd place effort at Darlington Raceway and 30th place effort at Kansas Speedway were his only finishes higher than 15th since he was third in the Daytona 500 to start the year.
And following Sunday's Texas incident, which left him starting at a second consecutive DNF and third overall, he has dropped outside of the top 16 in the point standings and thus out of the provisional playoff picture.
He started the afternoon 15th in points, 14 points above the playoff cut line, but now finds himself 17th, seven points out. Joe Gibbs Racing's Chase Briscoe now occupies the 16th and final spot, after starting the day 17th.
Perhaps more notable is the fact that Team Penske's Austin Cindric, who endured a rough start to the season himself and has historically relied on wins to qualify for the playoffs, is now 15th, 13 points ahead of Logano.
With Blaney still a strong fourth, despite his own recent struggles, the three-time champion is the lowest Team Penske driver in the standings following this year's iteration of the lone race he won a year ago.
It's certainly not time to panic for Logano, but with the halfway point of the regular season quickly approaching, that could change. His average finish of 21.0 is a career-low, he hasn't won a race in more than 12 months, and he's led a total of six laps in the seven most recent races.
He hasn't missed the playoffs since 2017, and his success in even-numbered years, including a 100% Championship 4 appearance rate in six tries, is well-documented.
But the No. 22 team needs a quick turnaround, and that quick turnaround needs to include more than just a well-timed five-overtime fuel mileage victory over the driver last in the standings, or a well-timed disqualification of a rival.
Because under NASCAR's new format, these are no longer enough.
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