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 our short track stuff has been good. We need to give him a little bit of a better car at the intermediate tracks, but you know we’re going to continue to fight and give him better cars every week and keep pushing forward.”
A key moment in the race for Berry and many drivers was a lap 183 caution for Daniel Hemric scraping the wall off turn 2. It came during the middle of green-flag pit stops and split the field on strategy.
At the time, some drivers toward the back of the field, like Ricky Stenhouse Jr., used the opportunity to gain multiple positions, staying out and trapping several other drivers a lap down. In Berry’s case, it solidified his track position and set him up for the ability to take the lead later on in the event.
“Yeah, I mean you just kind of wondered what it was going to be like for them,” Childers said about the caution and Stenhouse’s team’s subsequent decision to stay out on old tires. “And you wonder, like, whose call was that? Where it comes from? You know ultimately you have to make those calls. They made that call and ended up with a good finish so hats off to those guys. When we got ready to go back green on that restart, you know Josh was behind him, he said, ‘He’s got cords all the way around his left-rear tire. So for him to make it work and all that stuff, those guys did a good job, they needed a good finish about as bad as we did. I know in my career of 21 years, I’ve thought about doing it a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever done it but maybe twice in 21 years. I mean, sometimes you got to do that and if you can lock half of them a lap down, that’s the way to go.
“Yeah, I mean everybody’s got to run their own race. And they did a great job and Ricky drove a smart race. Everything’s good from their side.”
Following the caution on the stage three restart, Berry jumped into the lead and stayed out front for 32 circuits. But when the final caution flag flew, differing pit strategies cost Berry several positions for the final restart. It wasn’t a mistake by his SHR pit crew, though.
“We did four tires there at the end, those other guys did two,” Childers explained. “We were the first one on four. And then the restart just didn’t work out for us. We needed to have a better restart. The No. 47 spun his tires real bad and there was nowhere for us to go. Got pretty far back before we ever got rolling again and so, you know, those things are going to happen. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. Everybody did a great job on our team and fought hard the whole race and got a good finish out of it.”
Ultimately, Berry came home seventh, his best result since SHR announced it is ceasing operations at the end of 2024. The future for driver, crew chief and those within the organization remains a giant question mark.
But regardless of which team Berry, Childers and the No. 4 team members go in 2025, all of them eagerly joined a chorus of voices who want Cup to return to the 0.875-mile short track.
“I’d never been out here before and when I turned off the interstate, I could see the racetrack,” Childers noted. “This was the first day, I’d never been in here before. I told my guys in my van, I said, ‘This place is freaking awesome.’ And we come through the tunnel and I was like, ‘Holy shit, why have we not been racing at this joint?’ But we should’ve been here a long time ago. Just a great area. A lot of fan stuff downtown, the hotels were great, everything about it was good. So hopefully we can keep doing this for a long time.”
Follow Mark Kristl on X @MarkKristl
About the author
Mark Kristl joined Frontstretch at the beginning of the 2019 NASCAR season. He is the site's ARCA Menards Series editor. Kristl is also an Eagle Scout and a proud University of Dayton alum.
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It would be great to see Berry, Childers and the rest of the 4 group move on to another team as a “package deal.”