4 Burning Questions: Can Josh Berry Do It Again at Homestead?

Can Ty Gibbs turn his season around at Homestead?

It’s been nothing short of an abysmal beginning to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season for Ty Gibbs.

His best finish is 16th at the Daytona 500, with other results including 32nd after crashing at Atlanta Motor Speedway, 34th at Circuit of the Americas, 25th and wrecked at Phoenix Raceway and 22nd last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Sitting 34th in points, Gibbs is in desperate need of a good weekend, and there are two good trends for him and his No. 54 Toyota team.

First, from his group in practice, he was one of the faster drivers in the long run at Homestead-Miami Speedway. His overall long-run speed was good enough for the fourth fastest of those with a 30-lap average, and his short-run speed was the sixth-fastest overall average in practice.

Second, Gibbs tied a season-best qualifying result of 13th for Sunday’s (March 23) race, and with his pace from practice, he could be in line to finally break through for a solid performance at Homestead.

But to finally get a great finish, Gibbs also has to eliminate the mistakes that have plagued him and his team. They seemingly have the pace issue settled initially, but Gibbs needs to avoid the big pileup or speeding on pit road to keep his track position. Avoiding those pitfalls as well as just staying on the lead lap can finally help give Gibbs and this team a breath of fresh air in 2025.

Will Josh Berry go back-to-back?

Rolling off second tomorrow, Josh Berry looks to complete something for his Wood Brothers Racing team that hasn’t been done since 1980 with Neil Bonnett: win back-to-back races for NASCAR’s oldest race team.

Berry continues to show that his speed in the No. 21 Ford is no fluke.

While he only was 31st fastest in practice, his lone race with Stewart-Haas Racing resulted in a respectful finish of 11th, sixth best among active drivers in the Next Gen era. Getting that fast lap in qualifying allows Berry to be in a position to make this feat possible.

The biggest obstacle for this team is finding the overall pace for race day. Starting up front will help for the clean air, but last year, Homestead proved to be one of the easiest places to pass among the 1.5-mile tracks, averaging 25.6 passes per green flag lap and 33 lead changes, a Homestead record.

Again, Berry being at the front is a massive positive to go along with the last four races for the team, adding back-to-back wins for this historic team would be more than an exclamation mark.

Should Homestead return as the championship race?

Another trip to South Beach for NASCAR means the conversation for Homestead coming back as the championship finale sparks once again. This time, the drivers gave considerable input regarding the topic.

William Byron is all in favor of the championship returning to the track.

“I think it’s due for, hopefully, being the final race,” Byron said. “It sounds like that’s what’s going to happen. Hopefully, that’s the case.”

On a different spectrum, Ryan Blaney was more nonchalant about the notion of the championship returning to the venue. Instead, he revealed that he would like to come to the track twice and that the championship race should rotate between tracks.

“It doesn’t matter to me when we come here, whether it’s spring, fall, in the playoffs, championship race, as long as we’re coming here,” Blaney said. “Do I think the championship race should rotate between a few tracks? Yeah, and I think this should be one of them.

“It’s a sham it’s not in the playoffs in any realm, because I think it makes for a great playoff race. You have a lot of excitement around it. I wish it had two dates.”

Homestead has proven time and time again in the Next Gen era that the championship should return there, given the racing product it produces. Compared to last year’s championship race at Phoenix Raceway, Homestead had just over double the lead changes (33 to 16), nearly triple the green-flag passes (25.6 to 9.7) and the more exciting finish by a long shot, with Tyler Reddick passing both Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney in the closing laps vs. Joey Logano fending off Blaney in the final 20-plus laps.

While Phoenix has modern amenities over Homestead at the moment, the much-needed upgrade to Homestead should give the track the necessary improvements to host the championship race once again for the foreseeable future.

To Blaney’s point, rotating the championship races between tracks isn’t a bad idea, either. Although options are limited in early November and notwithstanding some of the crown-jewel events on the calendar, tracks like Darlington Raceway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Nashville Superspeedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Martinsville Speedway, the uncompleted Auto Club Speedway short track and, of course, Phoenix are options that could be in play for a championship race.

However, no other track has had the push by fans, drivers and media more than Homestead in recent years.

Has Layne Riggs entered the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship conversation?

It’s been a night-and-day start to the season compared to Layne Riggs‘ rookie 2024 season and his sophomore 2025 season.

Last season, by the fourth race at Bristol, he earned his first top 10 of the season with a finish of 10th but had two back-to-back finishes of 33rd at superspeedways Daytona International Speedway and Atlanta and 22nd at Vegas. Riggs was outside the top 20 in points at this point of the season.

This year, Riggs has opened up with better finishes at the two superspeedways, finishing 13th at Daytona and 20th at Atlanta. But he has made a major step at intermediates Vegas and Homestead, finishing fifth and second and leading a combined 15 laps all in the final stage of both races.

Riggs sits comfortably eighth in points, 22 points above the cutoff from two-time Truck champion Ben Rhodes, and after his late performances at the end of last season that included back-to-back wins at The Milwaukee Mile and Bristol, Riggs could certainly compete for the championship with the speed he’s shown to start the season.

The arguments in his favor are plentiful. First, Riggs took over the championship-winning No. 38 Ford from Zane Smith. The fact that Front Row Motorsports is capable of winning a title in the first place gives Riggs plenty of opportunity to unlock his potential (even if he’s moved to the No. 34 for 2025).

Also, he has an excellent teammate to rely on for the season in Chandler Smith. FRM expanding its Truck operation to two entries can give better resources and information to Riggs in the future and help his craft on the bigger ovals.

Finally, the rookie butterflies are gone. There were times when Riggs looked very down on himself at the start of last season. That all went away when he put in great performances down the stretch, including five top fives in a row at one point last season.

Getting this strong start to this season will go a very long way to helping the team fight for the championship come November.