Last weekend at the Pennzoil 400, Josh Berry emerged victorious for the first time in his Cup career. The Wood Brothers Racing star brought his team a second Cup victory in less than a year. This pretty much sealed his berth in the Playoffs, alongside William Byron and Christopher Bell. This also happens to be the WBR team’s 101st victory in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Of course, many fans were delighted to see the #21 driver reach Victory Lane. Especially considering that Wood Brothers Racing used to be a strong force during the 1970s. Unfortunately in later years, the organization seriously fell off a cliff in terms of performance. After 1991, the wins began drying up, with Dale Jarrett being the last winner. Then for the next 20 years, no Wood Brothers Racing driver managed to reach Victory Lane until Trevor Bayne during the 2011 Daytona 500.
That made him the youngest-ever Daytona 500 winner of all time. Then in 2017, Ryan Blaney bagged a win at Pocono, and there were no more Cup wins until Harrison Burton in 2024 in the Daytona fall race. Now, Josh Berry has added himself to that list of Wood Brothers Racing winners. Sadly, there have been a few in the NASCAR community who sought to undermine his win and attribute it to someone else’s contribution.
As per one Reddit post, “Is anyone else under the speculation that the hiring of Miles Stanley is what’s carrying Josh Berry to these stunning performances?” In essence, this fan suggested that the driver’s change in fortune was down to the new crew chief. Back when Harrison Burton drove the car, he partnered with Jeremy Bullins and Grant Hutchens. For 2025 though, it is a brand new line-up of Berry and Miles Stanley. Stanley does have decent credentials, being in the Penske pipeline throughout his career. And he got his breakthrough with the No. 33 team and Austin Cindric on a partial run back in 2021.
MARTINSVILLE, VIRGINIA – APRIL 11: Josh Berry, driver of the #8 Chevrolet Accessories Chevrolet, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series Cook Out 250 at Martinsville Speedway on April 11, 2021 in Martinsville, Virginia. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)
While the crew chief is the brains behind the operations and running a successful team, it also takes an equally skilled driver to execute the ideas on the racetrack. Although not a lot of NASCAR fans still have their doubts about Josh Berry’s racing credentials, his ardent supporters had his back.
Josh Berry deserves his flowers
Of course, a different section of fans took offense to the downplaying of Berry’s skills as a racer. One fan argued on Reddit, “Evolution of the Berry denial. He was only good on drafting tracks, we’ll have to see more intermediates to make a decision! He got ONE top 10. It’s still way too early to tell It’s miles stanley that’s carrying him to winning! I wonder what it’ll be next week.” Stanely has served as a race engineer for Joey Logano’s championship-winning team from 2013 to 2019. Moreover, he has also been a part of the 2022 and 2023 championship triumphs, so the fans really feel it is Stanely who’s doing the heavy lifting and not Berry.
But this was countered by an equally sound argument by one of Josh Berry’s supporters.“A crew chief change doesn’t make a team outside the Top 30 turning into a playoff contender. Long season to see how things plays out, but I really doubt Burton wins yesterday if he was still with the team.” Berry knows how to win races, for those of you who do not know he had three wins in his rookie Xfinity season. Not to forget, he once called the shots for Dale Jr.’s late model car at North Wilkesboro Speedway. If anything Berry knows the best of both worlds, and it would be naive to discredit him of his achievements.
Meanwhile, a few others called out Harrison Burton as they believed he held the No. 21 seat because of his father and family connections. We’ve seen this argument before, Ty Gibbs and Austin Dillon are often on the receiving end of the stick from the NASCAR community. However, when a driver like Berry, made his way to the premier series, his success was under the scanner for having a good support system around him. Let’s be real if Berry hadn’t won a race this season, he was considered to be on a hot seat, but now things are different, “Stanley helps, but also Harrison sucks and Berry is good.”
Although we all know that the #21 is the fourth Penske car built under the same roof, why these results didn’t reflect with Harrison Burton or Matt DiBenedetto, he did have top-five runs but had no wins. Whereas Burton’s win at Daytona last year had a luck factor to it. Agreed that it’s too soon to hype up Berry after all we are just five races into the season, but by no means his success should be overshadowed by the crew chief or the argument of #21 being a Penske car. If that’s the case, Ty Gibbs and Austin Cindric should be racking up multiple wins in top equipment. And this fan couldn’t agree more with this sentiment, “People who write off drivers’ winning performances due to equipment or crew chiefs are being ridiculous. It’s hard to win races as it is, no shit it’s going to be harder if you don’t have a good car or a good crew chief on the box.”
What do you feel about Josh Berry’s progress with Wood Brothers Racing? Is it good equipment or does he have the potential to script an underdog story in 2025?
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