Josh Berry, Rodney Childers and the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 team, like everyone else in the building, are now free agents but they really want to stay together, wherever they go next.
Is that realistic? Who knows.
Is it possible? Certainly.
Berry inherited much of the same group that dominated the NASCAR Cup Series over the past decade with Kevin Harvick behind the wheel. But that isn’t even the operative word either, because Harvick and Childers also hand selected Berry to be the successor of that legacy.
And even with the news that Stewart-Haas will shutter at the end of the season, it’s still the goal of the No. 4 team to succeed together now and potentially into the future.
In fact, Childers has specifically said ‘Josh Berry will not fail on my watch’ and he says it with the sort the conviction that you can’t not believe him. Berry appreciates that conviction too.
“I know he 100 percent believes that and is 100 percent behind me,” said Berry during a Tuesday NASCAR media availability. “From a confidence level, I feel the most confident I have ever felt because of comments like that.
“That is a strong statement from someone who has had the success that he’s had … Those are strong words from Rodney and I think they hold weight and I feel the same towards him. No matter how this shakes out, I’m am the world’s biggest advocate for him because he’s the best I have ever worked with and will be the best I will ever work with. He gets all the credit he deserves from over the years.”
Berry has taken his lumps in his first full-time season, one that already featured immediate uncertainty about the future of SHR, but he has started to gain his footing. Before a left front tire issue led to a crash on Sunday at Gateway, Berry was on a run of finishes no worse than 16th, including a P3 at Darlington and a P10 in the Coca-Cola 600.
“We showed flashes of speed early in the season,” Berry added. “Even during our worst races, we had runs where we learned a lot and got a direction and now we’re starting to build results and consistency. I’m getting more comfortable with the NextGen car. Rodney is more comfortable with me. There are some things I was struggling with that Kevin struggled with last year and some things that were just me but Rodney has done a really good job of working through that.”
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And just like that, he now doesn’t know what he is doing next year, but has a lot of powerful advocates behind him in Childers, agents Harvick and Josh Jones, and also long-time friend and employer Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“All those people are very valuable to me as we try to navigate this,” Berry said. “It’s just going to take time to figure out what’s next but I feel good about the people that are around me and time will tell what is next.”
And because of all of that, Berry said he wouldn’t change a thing if he had the chance to take a different ride or another opportunity knowing what was going to happen at SHR. It led him to his team and he hopes whatever comes next keeps him with this team.
“That’s 100 percent our goal, but it remains to be seen whether or not that is realistic or not,” Berry said. “We all want to continue together. We had a very strong month, month and a half. We’re continuing to grow. We’ve had some really solid runs.
“Rodney’s message has been to be patient and see what happens. But internally, that’s our goal, the best case scenario.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.