Friday Faceoff: Will Josh Berry or Austin Cindric Have the Better 2025 Season?

Which Ford driver will have the better 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season: Josh Berry or Austin Cindric?

Christopher Hansen: Going off of early season results, I’m giving Josh Berry a slight advantage over Austin Cindric. Yes, Cindric had a strong run in the Daytona 500, and he could’ve won Atlanta Motor Speedway had he not been run into the outside wall late by Kyle Larson. But Berry has been impressive the past two weeks, scoring a fourth-place run at Phoenix Raceway and a win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Additionally, Cindric was hit with a 50-point penalty from an on-track incident with Ty Dillon at Circuit of the Americas. It’s still early in the season, but Berry has the upper hand for now.

Jake Altmayer: While Cindric has put together some solid runs to start the season, I have to go with Berry. In only his second season in the Cup Series, Berry has already shown great speed at multiple track types, and his back-to-back top-five finishes at Phoenix and Vegas prove that he is capable of running up front and contending for wins on a consistent basis. Meanwhile, Cindric is now in his fourth year in the Cup Series and has yet to ever score consecutive top-five results in a season, something he needs to change this year if he wants to be viewed as a legitimate contender. While Cindric could still realistically make the playoffs, my money is on Berry to have a more successful year and make a deeper run into the postseason.

Luken Glover: Both drivers have shown early signs of marked improvement, with Berry opening the floodgates by winning in just his fifth race with Wood Brothers Racing. Cindric, meanwhile, has already led over half of his laps led total from 2024, and he just pieced together one of the best intermediate track runs of his career. Given that Berry just won on a high-speed traditional track, give me the short track ace in this department. Tracks like Martinsville Speedway, Richmond Raceway and Darlington Raceway are right up Berry’s alley, and while I expect Cindric to continue to show signs of improvement, Berry is ahead of the game. 

Landon Quesinberry: Berry. He’s been extremely consistent to start the year and has excelled at all track types that we’ve been to except for Circuit of the Americas, but that’s OK now that he’s in the playoffs. He only has to worry about the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL moving forward. Berry has a lot going for him, and he’s right around that age where guys start hitting their peak. Berry is going to have a season with the Wood Brothers that we haven’t seen since Ryan Blaney was there in 2017.

After all the loose wheels at Vegas, should NASCAR go back to tires with multiple lug nuts in the Cup Series?

Mike Neff: Can we go back to five lugs and normal sidewalls? The problems that continue to be faced without inner liners are truly frustrating. With five lugs, if you hit three of them successfully, you are good. With one lug, it is an all-or-nothing prospect. It would be a wise choice to abandon this experiment. 

Altmayer: While the issues on pit road at Begas last week were a bit concerning, it is still early in the season, and we will see the teams and pit crews improve and make less mistakes as the year goes on. Loose wheels have always been a concern for pit crews even before switching to the single-lug-nut wheel, so it would be a bit of an overreaction from NASCAR to try to go back now.

Hansen: Who can forget the high-pitched scream of the air guns as pit crews try to complete 13-second pit stops? I miss the days when an efficient stop to change tires and add fuel plus additional changes was the norm. To avoid having tires falling off the cars, can we please bring back five lug nuts for the Next Gen car?

Glover: How many street cars do you see on the roads in America today? Zero. Even though Cup cars have not been the enhanced, modified versions of their display floor counterparts for decades, there is still a yearning to preserve a small sliver of stock in these cars, which NASCAR and the OEMs aimed for in the design of the Next Gen bodies. However, they also cited the one lug as an innovation the auto industry was moving toward. Other factors included durability and torque to align with the larger, 18-inch aluminum wheel, and the sport believed that loose lug nuts in a five-lug system would reduce chances of durability. Yet how many wheels have we seen fall off with one lug nut compared to five? Plus, it puts extra stress on pit crew members to churn a 10-second-or-less pit stop while ensuring the wheel is tight, a complex transaction given that the teeth have to align and the locking mechanism needs to engage in such a quick time. It was a worthy trial, but it’s time to return to what was familiar. 

Where does Justin Allgaier rank on the list of all-time greats in NASCAR Xfinity Series history?

Quesinberry: It’s surprisingly tough to place Justin Allgaier on that list because it changes depending on if you’re talking about just drivers who made their careers in the Xfinity Series or if you’re ranking him all-time. If we’re just talking about guys who made their careers in the series, he ranks third behind Jack Ingram and Sam Ard, because he is still behind the pair in titles and he’s behind Ingram in the win column. If I’m ranking him on an all-time leaderboard, he slots in 11th, because you’re adding guys like Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr., Carl Edwards, Clint Bowyer, Mark Martin, Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who are ahead of him because of championships or win count on top of Ingram and Ard. He fits in right behind those 10 and in front of Tyler Reddick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who have the championships to be ranked ahead of him but don’t have the volume of wins that Allgaier has.

Glover: Allgaier is now a champion Xfinity driver who ranks inside the top 10 on the all-time wins list. That alone slots him into the esteemed group of all-time top 10 in that series. Eight of the drivers above him had extended, fruitful careers in the Cup Series. For Allgaier to obtain his success solely in the Xfinity Series after a short tenure in Cup, it only elevates the accomplishments he has racked up in his career. In my book, he is flirting with the all-time top five in NASCAR’s second-highest level. 

Neff: Busch is unquestionably the best NXS driver, with 102 wins. Second and third are Ingram and Ard. They are the the backbone that the series was built on when it started. Fourth is Martin, and Harry Gant rounds out the top five. The Earnhardts, Harvick, Edwards and Allgaier complete the top 10.

With Corey Heim continuing to dominate the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, where will he race full time in 2026?

Hansen: With a handful of starts in the Xfinity Series and some Cup starts, Corey Heim should be able to make that leap to either Cup or Xfinity in the next year or two. He’s done everything in Trucks except win a championship, but he’ll be in contention again in 2025. Long term, I’d like to see him have a full Xfinity season under his belt before ultimately moving up to the Cup Series under the Toyota umbrella.

Altmayer: At the rate Heim is going, it would be criminal if he stays in the Truck Series for yet another season, as he has proven that he is more than ready to move up the ranks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Heim race in the Xfinity Series next season for Sam Hunt Racing, as he is already running a part-time schedule for the team this year with support from 23XI Racing, with whom he also just recently signed a multiyear development deal. While 23XI clearly has future plans for Heim, as he’ll be making multiple starts for the team in the Cup Series this season, the only way that he can get a full-time ride with the organization is if it parts ways with one of its current drivers. So Heim may just have to be patient for the time being before he gets a full-time Cup ride.

Neff: Since Heim has signed a development deal with 23XI, hopefully it will move him up to Xfinity for a year or two. As good as he has been, you would understand the desire to move him up quickly. Patience would be a great virtue to exercise and allow him to better hone his craft before moving into the top series.

Quesinberry: Realistically, there are two places I see Heim being next year: either moving up to Xfinity with SHR or running another season in Trucks with TRICON Garage. I say this because it’s very clear that he’s just not going to get that call from Joe Gibbs Racing at this point. Unfortunately, that narrows your options drastically in the Toyota pipeline. It is clear as day that Heim is a Cup-level talent already and should be moved up, but I don’t see any of the Toyota teams in Cup moving on from their current driver lineups just yet. Maybe he can get lucky and another team switches to Toyota, or Legacy Motor Club or TRICON themselves acquire a charter from another team for next year, but that is super wishful thinking. People shouldn’t get their hopes up beyond a full-time ride at SHR through this new 23XI deal that he signed not too long ago.