Notes of Interest
● This Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon marks the halfway point for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. In the first 17 races, Josh Berry, driver of the No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing, has totaled one top-five finish, two top-10s and 38 laps led in his rookie campaign. While Berry has no Cup Series starts at the 1.058-mile New Hampshire oval, the 33-year-old Hendersonville, Tennessee native has three Xfinity Series starts there with his best finish coming in his July 2021 debut at the track, when he drove from his 21st-place starting position to finish eighth. In July 2022, Berry won the pole award but was relegated to a 31st-place finish after being involved in an on-track incident on lap 126. Last year, Berry started the 206-lap Xfinity Series race third and finished 17th.
● The Cup Series’ first-ever race at Iowa Speedway in Newton last Sunday was a resounding success for Berry and the No. 4 team. Berry qualified third on the .875-mile oval that is surrounded by cornfields. He finished the first stage in fifth and the second stage in the runner-up position before taking the checkered flag in seventh, leading twice for 21 laps along the way. It was his third top-10 in the last five Cup Series events and lifted Berry to 21st in the 2024 Cup Series driver standings and increased his lead in the Sunoco Rookie of the Year standings to 12 markers ahead of second-place Carson Hocevar.
● Berry’s crew chief Rodney Childers is a three-time winner with retired Stewart-Haas driver Kevin Harvick at New Hampshire, and also won at the track with driver Brian Vickers. In July 2013, Childers guided Vickers to the driver’s third and final NASCAR Cup Series victory by outlasting Tony Stewart – the “Stewart” in Stewart-Haas Racing – in a battle of fuel saving. Stewart had led a total of 84 laps and was running second behind Vickers on the final lap of a green-white-checkered finish. Stewart’s car sputtered off turn two and, out of fuel, was forced to coast all the way down the backstretch and through turns three and four of the flat, mile oval. While Vickers and Childers were celebrating their win, Stewart rolled down pit road and across the finish line a gut-wrenching 26th.
● Stewart, a 2020 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee, had a solid record of his own at New Hampshire with three wins in 35 starts among his 15 top-fives and 19 top-10s with 1,302 laps led there. The only driver with more laps led at New Hampshire is fellow NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon with 1,373.
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Josh Berry, Driver of the No. 4 MINER Ford Mustang Dark Horse
You have a pole position at New Hampshire but haven’t had the finishes to reflect the speed you had there in the Xfinity Series. What is it going to take to put together a whole weekend this Sunday in the Cup Series?
“We definitely had speed there, we just couldn’t translate it to the race for one reason or another. But I do enjoy going to New Hampshire – it is a fun racetrack for me and I feel like it is a place that fits us, the No. 4 team, really well. We feel like we can go there and have a solid day and I think a lot of that has to do with our program gelling really well. Iowa was a place that we all kind of went to for the first time and found speed, had good pit stops, limited our mistakes, and came home with a top-10 day. I have been saying it a lot, but I think this program has come such a long way and continues to improve each week.”
What makes New Hampshire fun for you?
“It just has a short-track feel. It is obviously bigger, but the way I approach that track is similar to a short track and it usually opens up to have multiple grooves in the race, which creates good racing. For me, the options of other lanes and choosing where to run and how to make passes, the creativity of it all, is what makes that place fun for me.”
With another top-10 at Iowa, you now have three top-10s in the last five weeks. What does the No. 4 team need to continue to do in order to maintain that momentum?
“It’s not really an exciting answer but we are going to stick to our process. We have developed a really good routine to follow and my team does a really good job of studying the data, looking at trends, giving me film to watch, and giving me the right tools to prepare each week and I think if we continue to follow this process we have created within our program, there is no reason we can’t continue to contend. We have had so many moments in the early part of the year that showed we have speed but couldn’t put it all together and, as we stayed our course and trusted each other and learned each other, we have become a more well-rounded team with a shorter list of things to iron out. That list of bugs is always something you will face when you join a new team and it was magnified because I am a rookie, but I can’t say enough about how well this team has done to get me up to speed quickly and give me the confidence that I can do this job and do it at a high-level.”
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