Josh Berry‘s Southern 500 was one he’d love to forget. Berry qualified third for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Darlington Raceway, but that’s where the positives of the weekend end.
His No. 21 Ford bottomed out in the first corner of Lap 1, turning him into Tyler Reddick and sending him sliding down the backstretch. Berry, thought to be a dark horse contender at Darlington, finished last. Freddie Kraft, spotter for Bubba Wallace, shared his take of Berry’s night on Monday’s “Door Bumper Clear” podcast.
“That sucks for them,” Kraft said. “Josh is a really talented race car driver, obviously, and qualifies good. That’s a place that lends itself to Josh’s strengths — taking care of tires and managing the race. It just sucks that he qualified so good and now… he’s [last in the playoff standings].”
It’s been a struggle for Berry for some time. Since his win in March at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, he has just four top 10s and zero top 5s. They were hopeful they could turn it around in the postseason, but they never got the chance to do much at Darlington. Berry now finds himself 16th in the playoff standings, -19 below the cutline.
Darlington was a struggle for several playoff drivers
“We just took off there,” Berry said after the race. “Obviously, it’s the first corner, you’re just getting up to speed. The car bottomed out five or six times and just wrecked. It was definitely unexpected. We didn’t really fight that too bad in practice. I saw a replay of it when I was sitting in the car while they were fixing it from the 1, and you could tell that it bottomed out four or five times and you can’t save them when they’re like that.
“… It’s just disappointing. It looked like a lot of people had a bad night, which we know how this goes. We just need to avoid a bad night. I obviously haven’t seen it yet, but I feel like we’re still within striking distance that if we just go have two good weeks, we’ll at least be in the mix once we get to Bristol.”
The biggest surprise from Darlington was the collective ineffectiveness of Hendrick Motorsports. William Byron, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman — all playoff drivers — all failed to finish inside the top 15. Elliott wasn’t full of much confidence after the race, while Bowman described his run as a “shitty, unacceptable day on all fronts.” TJ Majors, spotter for Brad Keselowski, questioned if they got worse once the sun went down.
“We passed the 5 [and] the 24 with about 15 laps left. The 9 as well, they were all falling off hard,” Majors said. “They looked OK in the beginning — not like win the race — but they were competitive. I don’t know if the track when the sun went down, they got worse as it went along or something. They definitely weren’t strong.”
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