(Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
LONG POND, Pa. — After winning three times and making the Championship 4 last season, Josh Berry hasn’t quite had the season that he anticipated in 2023.
Through 18 races, Berry has 11 top 10s and is sixth in points, but has yet to make it to victory lane. The last stretch of races has been particularly brutal for the JR Motorsports driver — 23rd in the streets of Chicago, 19th at Atlanta Motor Speedway and 18th at New Hampshire Motor Speedway after a late crash.
“The last couple of months have been a struggle. I’m not going to shy away from that,” Berry said in a press conference at Pocono Raceway. “We’ve had some tough days and we’ve had days that we’ve finished better than we really should have.
“It’s easy to kind of just say that your speed is off, but we’ve just struggled getting the car balanced like we want. After the season that we had last year as a company, the expectations are high, so that makes the off days a little worse. But ultimately, I felt like every time we’ve got my car driving pretty good, we’ve had the speed to contend for top fives. We’ve just been trying to get our arms around that.”
Though, it hasn’t been just Berry who’s been off in the JRM camp. Combined, the organization’s four drivers have just one win, which came from Justin Allgaier at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Berry, however, acknowledged the uniqueness of 2023 for him. He’s made nine starts as an unexpected fill-in driver for Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman when the Hendrick Motorsports drivers got injured. Last month, Berry got announced as the next driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing car in the NASCAR Cup Series.
But Berry’s current focus is making another extended run in the Xfinity playoffs with his No. 8 Chevrolet Camaro team. Including Saturday’s Explore the Pocono Mountains 225, Berry has just eight more opportunities to win a race in the regular season and try to increase his number of playoff points. He’s currently 105 points above the cutline and in comfortable shape to make the playoffs on points.
(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
“We need to run better, we need to score more stage points, we need to just be more of a threat than we’ve been,” Berry explained. “Internally, we’ve had a lot of tough, tough days and tough conversations about that and we know that if we’re at our potential and I’m at mine, that we can do amazing things together.
“We need to be faster [and] we need to be up front leading laps. Otherwise, we’re going to be skirting each round of elimination.”
Berry’s weekend at Pocono got off to a solid start by winning the pole after what he classified as his best practice session of the year. He has top 10s in both his starts at the track, including a third-place finish in this race last season.
With long straightaways and three unique corners at the 2.5-mile triangle, Berry said clean air will be king in Saturday’s 90 lapper.
“It’s going to be tough to pass,” he said. “You kind of a lot of time get stuck racing time here versus your competitors, so starting up front, it’s going to be great for us if we can get up front and we lead some laps early on and go from there … these style of tracks seem to fit me better than most, so I’m encouraged and excited for tomorrow.”
After Pocono, it’ll be three road courses in the next four races for the Xfinity Series crew beginning with Road America next weekend. Berry, who grew up racing short tracks in the south, doesn’t have a lot of experience on road courses, but it’s a skill he’s worked to develop. In four races this season, Berry has top 10s at Circuit of the Americas and Portland International Raceway.
“I think I’ve gotten better,” Berry said. “Really my only experience ever on a road course has been in the Xfinity Series. It’s been a challenge learning that. We had a really good run at Portland. That was a real confidence booster for us. We had really good pace, qualified well. That was a big step in the right direction for us.
“I think I trust my instincts at those races. Typically I do a pretty good job of getting us to the end and getting a good result. I’m excited for it. Some good tracks coming up for sure.
Saturday’s race is set for 5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
