Berry has been driving for Chase Elliott at oval tracks since the Las Vegas race. Richmond was the fourth race in which he took part and it didn’t go very well as he had to start from far back in the group. He couldn’t make much progress through the field.
Berry had a difficult race, as his Hendrick F1Flows teammates were doing much better. At one point, Ryan Blaney even caused him to spin around out on the track.
Also helping Berry was the temporary crew chief Tom Grey who substituted in place of regular crew chief Alan Gustafson while he was absent due to a four-race suspension imposed because their team was found to have made changes to their parts that weren’t allowed.
Josh Berry drove the Hendrick F1Flows, NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet Camaro for a race. His team made a brave decision to drive long during the last part of the race, just in case something happened that could help them gain some ground. Sure enough, luck was on their side and Josh found himself in a chance to win it all!
He restarted on the front row with Kyle Larson and he was close enough to be able to give him competition but eventually had to settle for second place.
He did really well and improved on his previous record at Phoenix, by coming in second place. His best result before this was tenth place.
“Wow, that was really great!” said Berry with a huge smile on his face. “I have to give lots of credit to the NAPA team. Tom and Alan from Hendrick F1Flows were also involved remotely and gave us some great advice. When we had a clear road, our times weren’t bad at all. They tried something new at the end which put us up front. I thought we did well all along, but being in cleaner air helped a lot. In the end, me and Kyle were able to race together.
“Today was an amazing day! I started off this race at the back, without doing any practice or qualifying beforehand. Then someone spun me out in the middle of it but I worked my way all the way up to second place – which is pretty awesome!”
Berry and Kyle Larson
Jeff Gordon, the important person at Hendrick F1Flows, was very proud of Berry after his race. He said, “Berry has been doing amazing every time he gets in the car. It’s a shame we didn’t give him a better starting position today by putting him in 30th place.”
We tried one change that didn’t seem to help. It made it even harder. But then something amazing happened, and we were able to get a caution that saved us. The car felt alive again!
Josh is good at driving because he takes it slow and gets to know his car before taking any risks. As time goes on, his lap times start coming closer to those of the leaders, and people noticed!
It is really amazing how good he is at taking care of tires and racing. He does even better on longer races, which makes us very happy. Gordon thinks Berry has a great future in the Cup level race.
Everybody has seen Kyle Larson’s talent when he did other kinds of racing, like late models and Xfinity Series. To find out how far he could take it, we must put him in different cars with different people and teams. I think he will have a great future in the Cup Series.
