PHOENIX, Ariz. – Joey Logano secured his third NASCAR Cup Series championship on Sunday after outrunning Team Penske teammate, Ryan Blaney, to win at Phoenix Raceway.

In the closing laps, Logano and Blaney dueled it out for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Championship. Blaney could get to the back of Logano’s No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, but he just couldn’t get alongside. As the two drivers navigated through lapped traffic, Logano stayed in command of the season finale. With the win, Logano becomes the 10^th driver in series history to win three or more championships, joining Tony Stewart, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and Lee Petty with three titles.

“I love the playoffs,” Logano said. “I love it, man. What a race! What a Team Penske battle there at the end. Had a good restart and was able to get in front of the 12 (Blaney). And he had a lot of long run speed there, and it was all I had there to hold him off.

“Man, three of them, that’s really special to get that. What a team. To fight through today, we went through a little bit of adversity throughout the race. I can’t thank Ford enough and Shell and Pennzoil and Hunt Brothers Pizza, Paul Wolfe (crew chief).”

Ryan Blaney entered the race as the defending champion, but at the end of the day, he just didn’t have enough speed to pass his teammate; however, he’ll finish out the season second in the standings.

“Yeah, just worn out really and just couldn’t quite get there,” Blaney said. “And tried really hard to do so, just restart didn’t really work out and just got too far away from me and took me a while to pass a couple guys and just could never get by Joey. Yeah, ran out of time.”

William Byron, who was also a Championship 4 competitor finished third. Byron’s team tried to carry out a different pit sequence than the other three competitors, but the plan wasn’t enough to catapult Byron into Victory Lane. The 2024 season marked the second consecutive season the Hendrick Motorsports driver was in contention to battle for a championship.

“We just needed a little bit more,” Byron said. “I felt like we gave it all we had, and that’s something to be proud of. We just didn’t have enough to go fight with the Penske guys. I could at times kind of inch up on them, but I felt like on the short and long run they were better, and mid portion of the run I’d be a little bit better.”

Kyle Busch finished fourth, and Christopher Bell, who led a race high of 143 laps rounded out the top-five.

Tyler Reddick, who was the lowest finishing Championship 4 driver, crossed the finish line in sixth. Reddick won the Regular Season Championship and was the first driver to take 23XI Racing to the Championship 4 of the NASCAR Playoffs. Throughout the day, Reddick made significant ground on restarts, but he ran the majority of the race in-between the top-five and top-10.

“Yeah, I think we definitely got our Beast Camry better throughout the day,” Reddick said. “Yeah, there was that one time there we were behind the other Championship 4 cars, and they just kind of were able to pull away over time. It was a good year for us and everyone at 23XI to get to the Championship 4 and have a shot at it was nice.”

Bubba Wallace, Chase Elliott, Chris Buescher and Daniel Suarez completed the top-10.

Logano won Stage 1, and Blaney won Stage 2.

The caution was displayed on four occasions for 33 laps.

The race started off with a bang, when Ty Gibbs lost control and pounded the outside wall on Lap 3 on the frontstretch.

Following the conclusion of Stage 2, the pace car crashed during the caution, bringing out a 5 minute 47 second red flag.

The final crash of the day occurred on Lap 251 during green flag pit stops. Zane Smith crashed in Turn 1, bringing out the caution.

The NASCAR Cup Series will return to action on Sunday, Feb. 2 for the Clash at Bowman Gray. The non-points pre-season race will broadcast live on FOX.

Photo Credit: Meg Oliphant/Getty Images