What Josh Berry’s chance with SHR means to Dale Jr., Tony Stewart — and all of NASCAR
Picture Josh Berry as an aspiring but struggling musician, standing outside an artist’s tour bus, his arm extended out, rain pouring down — as if he’s begging for someone with decision-making power to listen his demo tape.
That’s how Dale Earnhardt Jr. described Berry’s origin story on Wednesday.
“Same thing,” Earnhardt Jr. mused.
The NASCAR Hall of Famer and one of the most influential voices the sport has borne witness to then detailed the story.
“What Josh did was initially flag me down while we were racing on iRacing and said, ‘Hey, I race a Legends car at Nashville, and I’d like to show you some of my in-car camera footage.’ That was our initial conversation,” Earnhardt Jr. told reporters in the Charlotte Motor Speedway media center Wednesday. “And I said, ‘Sure, send it to me.’ So I watched his footage, and I was like, ‘Man, this guy knows what he’s doing.’ I loved what I saw.”
Fast forward 12 years — after Berry quit his job as a bank teller, after Berry moved into Earnhardt Jr.’s mother’s home and back out again, after Earnhardt Jr. and Berry saw enough success as a pairing to dub Berry a folk-hero of short-track racing — and you had Wednesday’s moment:
Berry, at long last, was officially getting his chance in NASCAR’s biggest stage, signing onto Stewart-Haas Racing to replace the legendary Kevin Harvick in the No. 4 Cup car for the 2024 season and beyond.
And it was not only special for the 32-year-old Berry — and it was not only special to those Berry proved right, like Earnhardt Jr. — but it was special to every short-track racer in America who has no money and no prestigious name but still wants to make it as a racer on the industry’s biggest stage.
And it was vitally important, too, to the sport of NASCAR, many said.
Why?
Because everything about Berry — how old he is, his merits, his ascension from lower-level racing all the way up — is what NASCAR prides itself on being.
“I’m not interested in some kid’s father coming in and buying their way into the Cup Series,” SHR co-owner and NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart said on Wednesday. “I have zero interest in that. We want guys who earn their way, who work hard, who understand the values it takes to be a top-tier driver — not one who just got his high school diploma and all of a sudden is a Cup Series driver. I’ve got zero interest in that.
“Josh has put in the time, the effort, and every time he’s gotten an opportunity, he’s made the most of it. And those are the traits that championship drivers are built off of.”
Dale Earnhardt got his first full year of NASCAR racing at 28 years old. Harry Gant got his first chance in a Cup car at 39. History suggests that it wasn’t until a few years ago that a new crop of drivers started getting their ultimate chances while they were still navigating their adolescence.
“I don’t like the direction that motorsports is going as a whole,” Stewart said with the recent influx of young drivers in the Cup Series. “And I’m not just picking on NASCAR. There are other series, I mean, they are putting kids in Late Models at 12 and 14. It makes zero sense to me. So I’m not a big fan of the direction that motorsports is going from that standpoint. I think motorsports as a whole is healthy, it’s strong, it’s positive, and everybody has different opinions on this: Just because I have an opinion on this, if there are 99 more people, they may say the total opposite of it.
“But I feel like I’ve been around motorsports long enough to know that I don’t think this is the right direction.”
Stewart said this has been a change in the last three or four years in the sport’s top series. The trend takes away opportunities from proven drivers and thus potentially deprive the country’s top racing league from the country’s best drivers — from the Josh Berrys of the world, Stewart might say.
“You get any driver that’s a good driver that knows how to go fast,” Stewart said. “On any given day, they can go win a race. But to go be consistent, and go do that consistently, and on the days that you have a 15th place car, figuring out how to get an eighth place finish — that is harder to do than it is the day you’ve got the winning car. ... It’s little details. And that’s what this sport is. It’s down to micro-details, and that’s what your drivers have to be thinking about all the time.”
One guy who made an all-time career off of being consistent — of finding ways to pull out finishes no one foresaw — was Harvick. He was also in attendance Wednesday.
Although he won’t be in the car next year, Harvick was keenly interested in his successor. He and Stewart founded this 4 team in 2014 and wants to see it do well, sure, but there’s another element, too: Harvick has set up his post-retirement life to being devoted to the sustenance of short-track racing after buying an ownership stake in the CARS Tour earlier this year.
”I think the CARS Tour piece of it is very relevant,” Harvick told reporters. “Obviously a group of us owning the Tour and to have an alumni (Berry) of the CARS Tour to make it to the Cup level and do the things that he’s done in the CARS Tour is great for us as a series. And to show exactly what Tony was talking about earlier: It’s not a checkbook that got Josh to this point. It was talent and showcasing your talent in the right spot.”
Toward the end of his busy, life-changing Wednesday, Berry said that there was a moment in his career a few years ago when he would be content just being a “badass” short-track racer. (Others felt the same way, for what it’s worth: “My God, I would’ve run in Late Models with him until it ran me broke!” Dale Jr. said Wednesday. “We were having a blast.”)
But something changed a few years ago.
And for himself, for SHR and for the sport of NASCAR — it might’ve changed for the better.
“I thought my fate was made for me, that I was going to be a full-time short-track with that,” Berry said. “And I was OK with that, I guess in a way. I don’t think that’s a derogatory or a negative thing to be one of the baddest short-track racers in the country. And there was most definitely that time that I felt like that was going to be my path, and I was OK with that.”
He added: “The reality of it is, when it comes to the Cup Series, there are only 30-something full-time Cup rides. So the odds are stacked against you making it to this level. And that’s OK. And sometimes, you can be a badass racer and just never get the opportunity.”
But Berry’s opportunity has now come.
At long last — for everyone.
This story was originally published June 21, 2023 at 5:39 PM.
