Three NASCAR Cup Series championships would satisfy almost any driver. But for Joey Logano, there’s still one title that got away. Nearly a decade after one of the most controversial playoff moments in modern NASCAR history, Logano believes the chain reaction from that incident may have cost him a fourth championship. But he admits he made one massive, costly mistake in the aftermath.

Joey Logano still believes 2015 cost him Championship No. 4

“Could be sitting here instead of three-time, four-time. You look back at it and say, gosh, that’s a big mess. That’s an expensive win. I think the way I handled it post would have been the thing that I would have changed. I don’t think I would have changed anything about the race. I feel like I was done wrong.”

Now, more than ten years later, Logano sees the 2015 Chase through the same lens. To understand his frustration, you have to look back at Kansas Speedway.

Joey Logano had just won his second consecutive Chase race after battling Matt Kenseth for the lead. The contact between the two sent Kenseth spinning, ending his championship hopes and eliminating him from title contention. That’s part one.

The following week, Logano won again at Talladega. That victory gave Logano a dominant three-race winning streak.

Now, part two. Two weeks later, at Martinsville, Kenseth decided to get his revenge. Already multiple laps down and nursing a damaged race car, Kenseth waited until Logano caught him late in the 500-lap race. Entering the corner, Kenseth turned sharply into Logano and sent both cars crashing hard into the outside wall.

Joey Logano’s afternoon was over as he finished 37th. The championship favorite suddenly found himself at the bottom of the playoff standings. His reaction was immediate.

“He was a complete coward,” Logano said at the time. “…It’s a chicken-you-know-what move to completely take out the leader when your race is over.”

Even now, Logano doesn’t believe Kenseth was justified. Looking back, he argues he was the one who had been wronged.

“The facts are I got fenced going into the corner,” Logano recently explained. “I said you fenced me… and then I went to the bottom and he went to block me at the bottom. I said you can’t double block.”

For Logano, the mistake that he made was not the move itself but everything that followed. “Probably should have had that conversation,” he admitted, acknowledging that perhaps speaking with Kenseth between Kansas and Martinsville might have changed how everything unfolded.

Instead, the fallout only grew worse. One week after Martinsville, disaster struck again at Texas. Logano suffered a cut tire, spun, and limped home in 40th. That left him entering Phoenix with only one path to the Championship 4: a victory. He came close.

Joey Logano finished third while Dale Earnhardt Jr. claimed the win in a race shortened by approaching weather, officially eliminating Logano from championship contention. He would finish fourth in the season finale at Homestead and ultimately sixth in the final standings.

It’s impossible to know whether Logano would have won the 2015 championship had Martinsville never happened. But he believes he would have. In his mind, that Kansas victory came with an enormous price tag. It started a rivalry that spiralled into one of NASCAR’s most infamous acts of retaliation, derailed what had looked like a championship-bound playoff run, and left him wondering whether he should already own four Cup Series titles instead of three.

For most drivers, those questions eventually fade. For Joey Logano, they never really have.