LAS VEGAS — Winning an intense battle against Daniel Suárez after a restart with 19 laps left, Josh Berry pulled away to a convincing victory in Sunday‘s Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The win was Berry‘s first in the NASCAR Cup Series at a track where he won twice in a NASCAR Xfinity Series car. Berry is the fourth straight Wood Brothers Racing driver to pick up his first Cup win in the No. 21 Ford.
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“Oh, man, I don’t even know what to think,” Berry said after climbing from his car on the frontstretch. “Just awesome. I love this track. Las Vegas has been so good to me. So many great moments here.
“Just struggled in the Next Gen car here. But (crew chief) Miles (Stanley) and this whole 21 team, everybody at Wood Brothers Racing, they gave me a great car today. Just battled and battled and battled. Man, it was our day. I just can’t believe it.
“Such a battle with Daniel there at the end, beating and banging on a mile-and-a-half — crazy! Whoever was going to get out front was probably going to win. We were able to get in front.”
Berry and Suárez restarted side-by-side on Lap 249 of 267. Suárez didn‘t surrender the lead until Lap 252, when Berry nosed ahead at the start/finish line. Lap 253 was nearly a dead head with Berry ahead by inches, but the No. 21 Mustang cleared Suárez‘s No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet through the tri-oval on Lap 254.
“We did everything right, you know?” Suárez said “The team did an amazing job on the strategy, pit stops. We did everything right. Our car was fast. We just struggled a little bit in the short run.
“I mentioned to my crew chief just a little bit ago, before the last run, I told him, ‘Hey, we want to be up front, I need a little bit better short run. I am having too much contact (with the bumps in the racing surface) in (Turns) 1 and 2.
“Unfortunately, I feel like that’s why we lost the race, just a little bit too much contact. I mean, I almost wrecked in 1 and 2.”
After clearing Suárez, Berry widened the gap in clean air and crossed the finish line 1.358 seconds ahead of the runner-up, earning a victory that also ended Christopher Bell‘s three-race Cup winning streak.
Berry got his chance when a Lap 195 caution for a seven-car wreck on the backstretch interrupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops and wrested control of the race from Stage 2 winner Kyle Larson, who had led 61 laps before pitting on Lap 197.
With the field flipped, Larson restarted 18th and could only work his way back to ninth before the race ended.
Berry, on the other hand, restarted seventh on Lap 201, worked the top of the track masterfully and snatched the lead from Suárez for the first time on Lap 234, before surrendering it to Cup champion Joey Logano two laps later.
Noah Gragson‘s hard contact with the Turn 2 wall on Lap 243 caused the ninth and final caution of the race and took fuel consumption out of the equation. Suárez regained the lead with a blistering four-tire stop, with Berry second off pit road, as Logano lost 19 positions during a fraught pit stop.
But it didn‘t take Berry long to set sail toward the 101st victory for the Wood Brothers, who got No. 100 last year at the hands of Harrison Burton.
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Ryan Preece ran third on Sunday, followed by series leader William Byron, who paced a group of four Hendrick Motorsports drivers in the top 10. Tire strategy helped Ross Chastain secure fifth place.
Austin Cindric, Alex Bowman, AJ Allmendinger, Larson and Chase Elliott completed the top 10 on a day when pit road resembled a comedy of errors. Both Chase Briscoe and Kyle Busch jettisoned loose wheels onto the track, though Briscoe rebounded from four laps down to finish 17th.
In a race that featured 32 lead changes among 13 drivers, Austin Cindric was second to Larson in laps led with 47, followed by Logano with 40, Tyler Reddick with 34, Bubba Wallace with 20 and Berry with 18.
For practical purposes, Bell‘s bid for a fourth straight Cup Series victory came to an end during pit stops under caution for Shane van Gisbergen‘s spin off Turn 2 on Lap 107.
By then, Bell, who started from the rear because of an unapproved throttle body change, had advanced to second in the running order, but his front tire changer failed to secure the left-front wheel before Bell left his stall, located near the entrance to pit road.
After frantic radio communication, Bell pulled into the pit of teammate Chase Briscoe, where the front tire changer on the No. 19 team tightened the loose lug.
Bell dropped to the rear of the field under penalty for receiving service outside his pit box and could make no progress in dirty air after two subsequent restarts. His No. 20 Toyota was running 29th when the No. 34 Ford of Todd Gilliland bounced off the Turn 4 wall on Lap 147 to cause the fifth caution of the afternoon.
Complaining of a loss of rear grip, Bell finished Stage 2 in 27th place, his chances for a rare four-race winning streak all but gone.
Bell subsequently ran as high as sixth after a two-tire stop on Lap 189 to gain track position, but he lost spots when the field flipped for the Lap 201 restart and could only recover to 12th at the finish.
“It was a grind today for sure,” Bell said. “I don‘t really know how I feel yet, but we certainly didn‘t do what we did the last couple of weeks, and that was just have a nice clean race.
“I think the Interstate Camry was definitely capable of competing for the win when we were at our best, but just going to the back and to the front and to the back and to the front, we just didn‘t get a handle on the balance, because it changes so much from being back there. I felt like we were in position in Stage 2 to contend for another win, but it got away from us.”
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