The championship hangover isn’t exclusive to NASCAR, but America’s most popular auto racing series has a habit of handing them down to its champions.
After winning his first Cup Series championship in 2012, Brad Keselowski followed up his championship run with a 14th-place points finish. To this day, 2013 is the third-worst season of Keselowski’s career.
Tony Stewart entered the 2006 season as a three-time champion, having won his third Cup Series title in 2005. In 2006, Stewart regressed to an 11th-place points finish — the worst of his career until 2013.
This year, it’s Joey Logano who must attempt to dodge the dreaded championship hangover following his third Cup Series championship in 2024.
Even with a third Bill France Cup in his trophy case, however, Logano enters 2025 amid a two-year slump. After sneaking up on the field to win his second championship in 2022, Logano was eliminated in the Round of 16 in 2023. While he won the championship in 2024, he did so with only 13 top-10 finishes and an average finish of 17.1. Without the NASCAR playoff format, Logano wouldn’t have been near the championship conversation, and the drop-off in speed over the past two years should be a cause for concern.
While Logano has been able to win championships in years where the No. 22 clearly doesn’t have championship-caliber speed on a consistent basis, that may not always be the case. The Cup Series field only continues to get stronger, and if teams that are consistently faster than Logano’s opt to employ the Team Penske philosophy of placing more of an emphasis on playoff races, Logano’s path to a fourth championship will become much more difficult.
The 34-year-old Logano is capable of dominating a race on any given weekend, but a lack of race-winning speed over the last two seasons doesn’t inspire as much confidence in that statement. While the No. 22 team showed up late in the playoffs, it was an afterthought for much of 2024.
If Logano wants to avoid a championship hangover in 2025, crew chief Paul Wolfe and Team Penske must find some answers, or it could be a long season for the defending champ.
