NASCAR: Joey Logano wins his third Cup Series title with a victory at Phoenix

Joey Logano is a three-time Cup Series champion.

Logano took the lead from William Byron shortly after the NASCAR Cup Series championship race’s final restart on lap 260 and led the rest of the way at Phoenix as he held off his Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney in the final laps.

“What a race, what a Team Penske battle at the end,” Logano said after climbing from his car.

Logano’s third title puts him in exclusive NASCAR company. Just 10 drivers have won three or more Cup Series titles. Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson all have seven. Jeff Gordon has four titles. And now Logano is tied with Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and Tony Stewart at three.

Logano’s title continues what has been a remarkable even-year streak. You should pencil him in for the 2026 Cup Series title. Logano’s previous titles came in 2018 and 2022 when he won the season finales and he has made the final four in every even-numbered year since NASCAR instituted its final race winner-take-all playoff format in 2014.

“I don’t know if I’m the best driver, but I have the best team,” Logano said.

Blaney quickly caught Logano after he passed William Byron for second but was unable to get to Logano’s bumper to attempt a pass inside the final 10 laps of the 312-lap race.

Logano started the race in second and led the second-most laps of any driver. Christopher Bell led a race-high 143 laps but Logano led 107 and clearly had the best car among the four drivers racing for the title.

All four of those drivers finished in the top six. Byron was third and Tyler Reddick finished sixth. In between them, Kyle Larson finished fourth and Bell was fifth.

The race featured just four caution flags and two of those were for stage breaks. The first came right after the race began when Ty Gibbs clipped the wall and then something broke before he slammed into the wall on the frontstretch. The second came ahead of the final restart when Zane Smith crashed on lap 249.

The most bizarre moment of the day came when the pace car brought out a red flag that lasted less than six minutes. As the race was set to begin the second stage, the pace car went to pit road too late and slammed into the sand barrels at the beginning of pit road. NASCAR officials had to red flag the race to clean up the sand that was spilled in front of pit road.