Joey Logano wins his third NASCAR Cup championship with victory in Phoenix

Joey Logano used his experience as he promised and made a seasoned move to win the season finale at Phoenix Raceway and secure his third NASCAR Cup Series championship.

Logano took the lead for the final time after gaining four places in two laps on a restart with 52 laps to go. After moving from fifth to third, he zoomed past teammates Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell to take first place.

In the final laps he fended off a furious attack from Blaney and won by 0.330 seconds.

“I love the playoffs,” Logano told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “I love it, man. What a race. What a Team Penske fight in the end. Had a good restart, was able to get ahead of (Blaney), and he had a lot of pace in the long run and was able to hold him off.”

With his victory in Phoenix, the Team Penske star won the championship for the second time in three years, securing his fourth win of the season and the 36th of his career.

The 34-year-old Logano became the sixth three-time champion in Cup Series history, joining Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarbrough, Darrell Waltrip and Tony Stewart. Only seven-time champions Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty and four-time champion Jeff Gordon have more titles.

Team Penske achieved its third straight championship after winning all three titles since NASCAR introduced its Next Gen car in 2022.

In a one-two finish for Team Penske, Blaney finished second, missing out one spot to become the first repeat winner in 14 years since Johnson.

The No. 12 Ford driver came within a few car lengths in the last ten laps, but was unable to force his teammate to make a mistake.

Byron came third, while the 4th Championship participants secured the top three places. Tyler Reddick finished sixth in his first Championship 4 appearance.

Kyle Larson was fourth and Christopher Bell, who was eliminated from Championship 4 due to a controversial decision a week earlier, was fifth. The Joe Gibbs Racing star earned some recognition by setting a race-best 143 of 312 laps, often leaving title contenders behind.

There were only two incident cautions in the race, the last for Zane Smith on lap 250, a lap after Byron pitted from the lead and was the last of the Championship 4 contenders to stop under green. Byron took the lead in his No. 24 Chevrolet on lap 254 as the other six cars pitted on the lead lap, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver was unable to hold onto the lead once the race was green again

On the second lap, the yellow card flew due to a violent collision by Ty Gibbs, whose No. 54 Toyota hit the outside wall in Turn 1. Gibbs had rubbed the wall in Turn 4 on the previous lap.

“Definitely a big hit, I made contact with the wall and I didn’t think it was that bad so I went for it (on a straight line),” Gibbs told NBC Sports’ Kim Coon. “I think I just caught it from a bad angle and it just hit me. I had no control then. However, it was a really, really big success.”

Stage 1 winner: Logano

Stage 2 winner: Blaney

Next: The preseason Clash exhibition race will take place for the first time on February 2nd at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, followed by the Daytona 500 season opener on February 16th. Both races will be broadcast on Fox.