Josh Berry is a throwback rookie. As the faces in the NASCAR Cup Series get ever younger, the 33-year-old Berry harkens back to a time when experience trumped potential.
His résumé includes a lot of winning, year after year, at every level. Along the way, his successful rise from the pavement late model ranks has made him a guidepost in the short-track world, proof that a talented local hero can indeed make it.
Now, as Berry embarks on his maiden full-time campaign in the Cup Series, the native of Hendersonville, Tenn., will look to parlay his Saturday night success into victories on Sunday afternoons. He’ll do so behind the wheel of the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Ford Mustang vacated by the retired Kevin Harvick.
“It’s a great challenge, but it’s a great opportunity,” Berry told SPEED SPORT.
It’s an opportunity that also comes with pressure. Harvick won 60 times in NASCAR’s premier series and is both a former champion and a future Hall of Famer. In many ways, he was also the Cup Series’ last significant connection to Dale Earnhardt.
Yet, Berry has always felt pressure to perform, and his background and mindset in many ways make him a logical choice to carry on the legacy of those legends.
Berry has an air of confidence, a feeling of belonging in the Cup Series. It’s easy to ask why it took so long. That’s something Berry himself has wondered. However, he knows the years of competing on short tracks also put him in a position where he grew as a racer.
“Nowadays, it’s so rare to have that kind of path be taken all the way to the Cup Series,” Berry said. “It’s definitely something that I’m really proud of. As for the past decade, I would do it all over again without a doubt. I feel like these years of grinding away at the short tracks better prepared me for the opportunities when I got back into the Xfinity Series a couple years ago, and I think that all translated into this rise that I’ve been able to capitalize on the past couple of years.”
Throughout his career, Berry has turned every challenge into an opportunity. He grew up winning races and championships in karts, then eventually got behind the wheel of a Legend Car at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway and other tracks around his middle Tennessee home.
He won in those cars, too.
He met Dale Earnhardt Jr. via online racing and signed to drive late model stocks in the Southeast for JR Motorsports in 2010. Berry soon set the late model world ablaze, winning track titles at Virginia’s Motor Mile Speedway in 2012 and Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway in 2014, capturing the 2017 CARS Tour late model stock championship and earning the 2020 NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series title.
He’s the all-time wins leader on the CARS Tour with 22 victories and has won multiple crown-jewel events in the short-track ranks, along with dozens of other triumphs in the discipline.
In addition, he served as crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in some of Earnhardt’s late model stock starts and worked on the management side of the late model team.
Over the course of more than a decade as he was tearing up the short tracks, Berry also got occasional opportunities in the NASCAR Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series. But it wasn’t until 2021 when a slated schedule of approximately 12 races in the Xfinity Series for JR Motorsports turned into more. That was due in large part to Berry’s victory at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway in the spring. He won two races that year and three the following season en route to an appearance in the Championship 4. In that time, Berry’s reputation went from talented short tracker to valuable Cup Series prospect.
That fact was further legitimized in 2023 when he was tapped to serve as a fill-in driver for both Hendrick Motorsports and Legacy Motor Club in the Cup Series while still running the full Xfinity Series calendar.
Despite his status as a full-time Cup Series driver, part of Berry’s identity will be forever tied to late models. He appreciates the tough competition in the short-track world and, in fact, thinks a common mistake made by young drivers is passing through the grassroots level too quickly in an effort to reach the national series. The grassroots part of their careers will be difficult, but that’s the point.
“It really doesn’t matter whether you’re talking asphalt or dirt, you have this array of guys that are career short-track racers and over the course of time when I was really grinding away at that level, I was learning against some great (ones),” Berry said. “I think that definitely aided my race craft when I got a more legitimate shot at the Xfinity Series and then the Cup Series.”
His rise also led to the development of a fan base, along with a group of racers who saw themselves in him. He wears that as a badge of honor and takes pride in seeing more short trackers like himself get opportunities in the upper echelon of the sport, perhaps, due in some part to his success.
Coincidentally, his SHR teammate Ryan Preece is a similar type of torchbearer for the asphalt modified community.
In the Cup Series, Berry is paired with veteran crew chief Rodney Childers, a fellow short-track driver who has now become one of the all-time greats atop the pit box. The two have already developed chemistry and Berry looks to capitalize on his wealth of knowledge.
Berry is set to be part of a competitive rookie class that also includes young drivers Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar. He has set the rookie crown as a goal, but otherwise, he isn’t looking too far into the future.
His experience in the Cup Series has provided some perspective as to how he’ll approach the season.
“I know that it’s going to be difficult and I know how competitive and how hard Cup racing is,” he said. “Thankfully for me, for the past six months I’ve had time to kind of mentally prepare myself for that.”
He’s confident in his team at Stewart-Haas and has had some experience driving the Gen 7 car, a machine vastly different from any other vehicle in NASCAR.
“Those are all good things that don’t necessarily have me feeling like a complete rookie,” Berry said.
He also finds himself part of a new, younger era at SHR after Harvick’s retirement and the departure of Aric Almirola. In fact, he is technically the oldest driver on the team despite his rookie status, with his birthday coming just three days before Preece’s.
Chase Briscoe and fellow newcomer to the team Noah Gragson remain in their 20s. The quartet is tasked with returning the organization to victory lane after a down season on the Cup Series side in 2023, based on the team’s lofty standards.
Berry still plans to compete in approximately a half dozen short-track races this year as well, primarily behind the wheel of the Kevin Harvick Inc. No. 62 car as Harvick gets the competition side of KHI back up and running.
Berry opened the season driving Harvick’s super late model during SpeedFest at Crisp Motorsports Park in Cordele, Ga., during late January. In addition, Berry drove the No. 62 car in some late model stock races at the end of last year with Childers serving as crew chief.
Berry’s short-track roots remain strong, and many of the discipline’s values have been a constant throughout his career. He is living out a dream shared by thousands of young racers, and if he had any advice for his younger self, it would be simply to keep going.
“It’s so cliché, but it’s so honest,” he said.
He’s faced adversity at multiple junctures, not only in trying to break through into the upper levels of NASCAR, but in simply finding a way to race in his formative years.
“Early on in my career there was always an obstacle in the way of just (going) racing, even when I was racing, the financials of it were always difficult,” he said. “I was kind of always one crash or one blown engine away from being done for a year. So just establishing that and keeping my head down I think definitely paid off in the long run.”
The late Ken Squier made famous the line that race car drivers are “common men doing uncommon deeds.”
Berry, a husband and father, embodies that concept. It’s even well-documented that he once spent a short time working as a bank teller in the Nashville area.
“It’s funny, right?” Berry said. “Like you’re just kind of a normal person that just happened to get to race for a living.”