Dale Earnhardt Jr. shreds narrative surrounding NASCAR playoff format favoring certain drivers

There’s a general feeling that the NASCAR playoff format favors Team Penske. For what it’s worth, Penske has won the last three championships — all in the Next Gen car era.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t see the playoff format as an advantage for Penske, or any team, for that matter. He brought up Joey Logano‘s championship-winning season in 2024, saying that Logano just “happened to have the good car” in the season finale at Phoenix.

“This format doesn’t favor or lend itself to anybody,” Earnhardt said on Tuesday’s Dale Jr. Download. “… This format is more about being great on a singular day, the rest of the season be damned. He [Logano] happened to have the good car that day at Phoenix. … You gotta credit Joey’s crew chief… they do the fuel mileage and different things. I don’t want to be wrong here, but remember at Vegas [in last year’s playoffs], was he even good that day? He was running just so average that he could do the fuel mileage.”

To think, Logano was, for a moment, eliminated from the postseason after the Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte ROVAL. NASCAR, however, disqualified Alex Bowman after his car failed post-race inspection. Just like that, Logano was back in. Four weeks later, he was a three-time Cup Series champion. Earnhardt used that situation to prove his point.

Does NASCAR playoff format favor Penske? Dale Earnhardt Jr. says no

“Logano was out at the ROVAL. Was that his plan to f*cking get back into the playoffs through a DQ? Ah, well, man, he’s so good at this. The f*ck are we talking about? He was out before the 48 got disqualified,” Earnhardt said. “So, you can’t tell me that hey, he’s the one who knows how to do this better than anybody else, because he was out if the 48 doesn’t fail tech for being five pounds light or whatever the hell it was because he run over the curb and threw the sh*t off his car.

“… Dude, Joey Logano is a f*cking champion, he is a badass race car driver. You can’t tell me there’s a strategy [to this]. Nobody is going to Vegas thinking, ‘We’re going to run 14th all day and then f*ck ’em on fuel mileage.'”

Two races into the 2025 postseason, and Penske isn’t the best team. That honor belongs to Joe Gibbs Racing, which saw Chase Briscoe win at Darlington and Denny Hamlin win at Gateway. We’ll see if JGR can keep it up as the playoffs continue. If the last three years have taught us anything, both Logano and Ryan Blaney will be a factor.