Josh Berry made a great deal of noise Sunday at Richmond Raceway. The Stewart-Haas driver is an accomplished short track racer and that experience showed Sunday.
Berry started 30th but didn’t take long to make an appearance inside the top 10. He would finish Stage 1 just inside the top 10.
He would stay near the front in the ensuing laps and was rewarded with second place in Stage 2. In the closing laps however, a combination of green flag pit strategy and the chaos of an overtime finish left him with an 11th place finish.
Berry called it a “solid night.”
“We had a really good car and a really good practice,” he said. “We didn’t qualify like we should have, but we were able to come up through there and get some track position back. It was just little things. We lost a little track position and got stuck in the back half of the top 10, but, all in all, it was a really good night.”
Like everyone else in the field, Berry raced on NASCAR’s damp tires for the first 30 laps. Unlike many of the rest of the field though, Berry, used to sliding around short tracks wasn’t complaining.
“It felt kind of normal, honestly,” he said. “It was weird. I really had no expectations of how that was gonna be and just kind of drove. I think we just had a really strong car. Rodney had a good plan for that and the car took off really well and we were able to get a lot of track position really quick.”
He was credited with leading two laps, and the finish was a season best for Berry who is in his first full season with Stewart-Hass Racing. He was also the highest finish rookie.
The next stop will be another short track, this one at Martinsville. It’s a track where Berry scored a win in the NASCAR Xfinity series with JR Motorsports in in 2021. He will have the momentum of his ‘solid night’ at Richmond as he hopes to continue improving in his rookie Cup season.
“We have a lot to be proud of,” he said. “It was a good points night, and we’ll go to Martinsville.”
e
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.