NEWTON, Iowa — At one point during the USA Network broadcast of the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway, a table was displayed showing the playoff picture with leader Josh Berry included. Although he didn’t win, winding up seventh, Berry posted career highs in laps led (32) and points (45) as the rookie took a major step forward in his Cup progression.
Berry and his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford program dramatically improved throughout the race weekend. Twentieth on the leaderboard in practice, he qualified third and ran inside the top 10 for the majority of the 350-lap race.
“I thought we had a really good race and a really good car,” Berry said in a team press release. “To score stage points like we did, we had some great restarts in there and just that last restart didn’t really go our way. We lost a little bit of track position and just could never get it back, but, all in all, just really proud of everybody on the No. 4 team. They did a great job. That was a lot of fun, for sure. We’re gonna keep digging to keep getting better.”
It’s another in a long line of solid results for Berry since a surprise third-place finish at Darlington Raceway last month. Since then, he’s earned two other top-10 finishes, leading a total of 39 laps during that stretch while gaining strength during a time of turmoil for SHR.
“You know, everything about the race went the way that we wanted it to,” crew chief Rodney Childers echoed to media members post-race. “We had a fast car, Josh did a great job, restarts were good. We checked a lot of boxes today. You know you got to crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run. And we’ve started to do that. I know the last two weeks didn’t really show that. But if you look before that, we’ve got better and better every week and had good runs and feel good about what we’re doing. A lot of adversity on top of that, so it’s interesting looking for a job all week and still coming and running like this.
“Everybody has stayed focused, keeps racing their hearts out and everybody that we race against knows what the No. 4 car is capable of, the people that I have. You know, Josh is just driving his butt off and if he didn’t show that he deserves to be in this series tonight, then something’s wrong, right. I mean you look back at Darlington, you look at here, you look at Richmond (Berry ran 11th), you know he’s doing a really good job. And you know…
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