Josh Berry at Las Vegas
Josh Berry celebrates his his third NASCAR Xfinity Series win of 2023. (HHP/Jim Fluharty)
NASCAR Xfinity Series

Josh Berry Leads JR Motorsports’ 1-2-3 Sweep At Las Vegas

October 15, 2022

LAS VEGAS – After right-side contact twice over the closing laps, Josh Berry held on to win Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, beating his JR Motorsports teammates Noah Gragson and Justin Allgaier.

With the win, Berry’s third of the season, he clinched a spot in the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway.

Berry, who led twice for 65 laps around the 1.5-mile track, took the lead for the final time with 34 laps to go. That was after he made contact with the outside wall in Turn 4 while challenging AJ Allmendinger for the lead on a restart the lap before. Later, as Gragson and Allgaier tried tracking him down for the lead, Berry made contact with a lapped car. 

Berry’s No. 8 Chevrolet survived any damage and he beat Gragson, who won stage 2 and led a race-high 87 laps, by 1.1 seconds.

“I was definitely worried (about the damage to his car),” Berry said. “AJ left me just a lane and nothing more and we were a little bit tight off Turn 4 all day and just ran out of real estate. But I’ve raced since I was 8 years old. Worked day in and day out to be here at this level. There was no way I was gonna’ back out. So I felt like that was my opportunity if we got out front that we could control the race. We had a lot of speed for about 30-35 laps of each run. You know it was it was shaping up to be ours to lose, we just had to get out front get the clean air.”

The win for the No. 8 team occurred after Berry had gone six races without leading a lap and 11 races since he led double digit laps (New Hampshire). Three of Berry’s five career Xfinity wins have come on intermediate ovals, including his win in last season’s playoff race at Las Vegas and this year’s visit to the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval.

Berry said “it’s been hard to say” what issues his team had been ironing out over the last few months.

“I think part of it, to be honest, is the schedule was super diverse there through the summer, you know, you got lots of road courses, superspeedways, we just kind of lost our rhythm throughout that,” Berry said. “Really when we looked at the schedule, we knew if we could make it to this to this round, Vegas, Homestead, Martinsville, would be three great opportunities for us. And we just had to be our best and you know, today I’m not gonna say we were at our complete best potential, but we had really fast race car in executing when it counted.”

For Gragson, who arguably has the best car all day, it was another disappointing outcome for the Las Vegas-native. In eight career Xfinity starts at his home track, Gragson has never finished worse than sixth. Saturday’s outcome was his third runner-up finish at the track.

“A top six is never a win,” Gragson said. “Had it won last year, green-white-checkered, got beat. … I just need to do a better job at the end of the day. So pissed off and go back and learn. Definitely my last Xfinity race here at Vegas, is one that I wanted to win a long time and get the job done, it sucks.”

The top five was completed by Ty Gibbs and Trevor Bayne.

Bayne bounced back from a near spin on Lap 3 and a mid-race pit penalty to earn his fifth top five in eight starts this season with Joe Gibbs Racing. But after the race, Bayne collapsed on pit road. He was on the ground for roughly a minute before he was able to return to his feet, smiling in the process.

“When I got out of the car my left ear was ringing,” Bayne said. “I knocked the crush panels out, so I don’t if I just got gassed.”

Bayne was later checked and cleared in the infield medical center.

Of the eight playoff drivers, the only one to finish outside the top 10 was Allmendinger in 22nd. After the final green flag pit stops of the day, Allmendinger was forced to pit again after he felt a severe vibration in his No. 16 Chevrolet. It turned out both of his right-side wheels were loose.

Saturday’s race was a relatively tame affair. Aside from the two stage cautions, there was only one caution for an incident, which wasn’t really an incident. It occurred on Lap 160 when Brandon Jones, who finished 19th, went into a half spin in Turn 1 before catching his No. 19 Toyota.

Hailie Deegan, who competes full-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, made her Xfinity debut Saturday. Driving the No. 07 Ford for SS Greenlight Racing (in a car prepared by Stewart-Haas Racing), Deegan finished 13th.

The race was completed in two hours and four minutes.

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