Josh Berry wasn’t supposed to make it.
The system for a long time was not set up for a driver like him to make it to the highest levels of NASCAR, much less win a Cup Series race, and yet here we are. Look at this photo, where Berry said ‘can you believe it,’ and it says everything you need to know about everything that led up to this point.
Berry is a 34-year-old, only in his second year racing at the premier division, in an era where that makes him downright old when teenagers begin racing in the Xfinity Series and make their Cup debuts around the time they are allowed to start sipping the champagne for winning races.
In that sense, Berry is a definition throwback racer, and the embodiment of how things used to be done.
It wasn’t five years ago that Berry resigned himself to being a short track lifer. ‘I wanted to be Bubba Pollard,’ he said. As part of his deal with JR Motorsports for a decade, Berry drove Late Model Stock Cars but also worked on them and served as a program manager alongside venerable crew chief Bryan Shaffer.
There were opportunities to drive in the Xfinity Series but like everything in motorsports, it required a check, because talent doesn’t pay for tires and engineering. So instead, Berry was just a beast across the Mid-Atlantic for the better part of a decade, and got to make a modest living working on and driving race cars.
For Berry to have made it in NASCAR, it required so many things to go a certain way. The timeline is actually quite remarkable when you timeline it out:
- Berry was set to race for the CARS Tour championship in 2020 but got suspended a race for retaliating against Bobby McCarty, the latest back-and-forth in a long-running feud, which then encouraged JR Motorsports to chase NASCAR national championship points instead
- They claim the NASCAR National Championship, which comes with a great deal of attention, and combined with Sam Mayer not being old enough to run the full 2021 Xfinity Series schedule, Dale Earnhardt Jr. secures the funding needed to run the first half of the schedule
- Berry wins in April 2021 at Martinsville, but most observers kind of dismiss it as something he was expected to do in that car and at that track, and it really doesn’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things
- JR Motorsports driver Michael Annett breaks his right femur while working out and eventually misses the rest of the season and Berry is eventually tapped to run the remaining races in that car
- Berry wins in the Annett car at Las Vegas, proving he is more than just a short tracker, and starts in earnest the conversations that he should be full-time
- It wasn’t a fait accompli that Berry would be full-time as there was a competition for that car and it came down to if the funding would be there to make it happen, which they ultimately did
- Berry won three times in 2022 and reached the championship race
- In 2023, Chase Elliott broke his leg in a snowboarding incident and Alex Bowman suffered a spinal injury in a Sprint Car crash and Berry served as the primary substitute and performed especially well in the Hendrick No. 9
- Berry signs with Kevin Harvick Inc. and is selected to be the replacement driver for Harvick at Stewart-Haas Racing in a season in which the team quickly announces that it is shutting down
- He does enough to convince the Wood Brothers to sign him to one of the most iconic rides in NASCAR history and they win at Vegas in their fifth start together
By the way, this timeline doesn’t include the sequence of events of being a Legends and Pro Truck racer at Nashville Fairgrounds who just happened to befriend Dale Earnhardt Jr. on iRacing.
He doesn’t even get the chance to drive big cars if it wasn’t for that relationship.
When typed out like that, it seems absolutely ludicrous that Berry is a Cup Series winner, not because he doesn’t deserve it but because it took all those relationships, injuries and circumstances to play out just right. Dale Jr.
It’s crazy.
Nevertheless, Berry has made it as a Cup Series regular and winner and downright looks like a threat to at least reach the Round of 8 in the Playoffs this October. The Daytona 500 didn’t go well but Berry raced for the win at Atlanta, including a stage win, and has been a top-5 driver across Circuit of the Americas, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
This is a de facto Team Penske car with a longtime company engineer in Miles Stanley serving as crew chief and they were the first tandem out of that building that also houses the cars driven by Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric.
Berry is approaching his prime years and he was fortunate to arrive in the Cup Series near the start of a new car, that everyone had to learn, and looks every bit like a veteran who could provide several more upsets in the years to come.
It would be so on-brand for a career that continues to defy the odds.
Resurgent Woods
Lost in the Josh Berry conversation is just how monumental this also is for Wood Brothers Racing — the oldest continually operating team in the NASCAR Cup Series.
This is the first time that the iconic No. 21 has won races in back-to-back seasons since 1986 and 1987. This is also career win No. 101 for the organization. When Harrison Burton won at Daytona last summer, it was seen as a business game changer because it ensured at least a 16th place championship finish for a team that hadn’t contended in several seasons.
Winning again raises the value of their charter, which receives end of year payouts based on three-year rolling averages, meaning that this car will once again finish in the top half of the standings two years in a row.
But there is a lot more to this win, too.
Burton won in the penultimate race of the season last year. Ryan Blaney won in June of 2017 at Pocono. This is uncharted territory for the No. 21 team according to team president Jon Wood.
“So now at the front end, it’s going to be a completely different feeling,” said Jon. “You’re racing now for stage points instead of a win. Knowing that we’re going to make the All-Star. Haven’t done that I don’t think in a long, long time.”
The Wood Brothers are going to race in the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro!
“That’s been a long time,” said Eddie Wood. “I don’t remember. Just I’d forgotten about the All-Star Race. Somebody mentioned a while ago you’re automatically in that, not in the other race. That’s big for us.”
The Wood Brothers are in such a complicated position. They were at risk of outright going out of business over a decade ago in a NASCAR environment that was not friendly to the classic family teams.
They were saved by Ford Performance and Team Penske, both recognizing the historical value of having the No. 21 remain on the track each week but Jon says that’s a double-edged sword too.
When we suck, it’s our fault. But when we do good, we had nothing to do with it. It’s 100% Penske or something.
“I think that’s a frustrating part,” Jon said. “These are our guys that are doing this. We sat in a room and debated who our next driver would be for 2025. It’s Josh Berry. Those are decisions that we made collectively. It’s our race team and our decision.
“It gets a little frustrating. I’m probably hypersensitive because I’m not just an admin that, like, laughs it off and doesn’t care because I got my paycheck for the week for doing social media. It hurts a little bit when I see that stuff.
“But then this happens and the results speak for themselves. I haven’t really had to be super crappy on social lately, defend ourselves. He’s just doing it. That’s the neat part.”
For the first time in a long time, Wood Brothers Racing is really, really back and have a combination they can build around for years to come.
‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’
Winner: Austin Cindric needed a day like this where he ran up front, won a stage, and finished sixth. He gained 11 spots in the standings and his 41 point day largely mitigated the 50 point penalty for his COTA right rear hook on Ty Dillon.
Loser: Kyle Busch was securely in an early playoff spot and stated over the weekend that his team had turned a corner but an inexplicable speeding penalty derailed what looked to be a competitive day when it also led to a loose wheel and a crash that dropped him nine points in the standings
Winner: Daniel Suarez is racing for his job this season, or at least a job somewhere, and while a runner-up isn’t quite enough, the No. 99 needs to be in the playoff mix and Sunday has him at least in the mix but this impending free agent really needs a win soon
Loser: Front Row Motorsports on the whole had an awful day. Todd Gilliland and Noah Gragson both hit the wall during the course of the race and Zane Smith just wasn’t a factor. Gilliland has been steadily competitive this year but this incident dropped him to 25 points out of a playoff spot.
Winner: RFK Racing needed a day like this. Ryan Preece gets his best career finish with a third. Chris Buescher remains the steadfast model of consistency with a 13th and remains in a playoff spot while Brad Keselowski’s 11th just provided some much needed positivity, even if it wasn’t enough to immediately dig out of this deep, deep hole they find themselves in right now.
Quality race
There wasn’t enough credit given to a quality of race on Sunday that included a record 32 lead changes. Nine different drivers led at least 10 laps.
Goodyear brought a softer left side tire to Vegas this year. It’s the same compound that was been used at Charlotte, Darlington and Homestead last season, all barn burner races. On one hand, the combination produced a ton of grip over the weekend and a lot of wide-open racing early in a row and in qualifying.
That stinks if you have traditional race craft values.
On the other hand, a lot of that was also the cooler temperatures always present in the spring race weekend. This combination should be downright fantastic come the summer race.
Even still, this softer left side and soft right side combination produced just enough fall-off to encourage teams to make decisions to take no tires, just left sides or four tires. And that is what produced all the racing and action on Sunday.
This race was another win for Goodyear and NASCAR as they continue to work on optimizing this car for every type of race track and surface on the Cup Series schedule.
