CONCORD, N.C. — Life for a driver trying to make it to the top in any of America’s top racing series is, by its nature, a rough row to hoe.
There are immutable facts that go along with trying to take the traditional route to the Big Time. The first is performance. Can you drive a race car? Drive it well? Do the things that you’ll need to do to tell your crew chief or team engineer what to fix?
The second is, do you have a personality? Odd as it sounds, that’s very important in the age of social media, 24/7 internet and technology. Can you be convincing while on camera, talk to a room full of potential investors and keep your head on social media? Can you behave yourself within the confines of what can be a motorized version of the gladiators of old?
The third, and possibly the most difficult, is to find the situation you need to make your way forward.
There are only so many seats at any one table, and to get one, you almost have to knock someone else off of his. Not physically, of course. (See the last sentence of the paragraph above for reference.)
As I’ve written about before, most opportunities come from having the financial wherewithal to get in front of the right people. Manufacturers and teams don’t usually do an all-call while looking for the next pilot of a stock car, Indy Car, sports car, etc.
They recruit, just like they do for college sports. If you have a good history and demonstrable talents, you can enter the arena. Who comes out on top is up to them.
Back a few years, all you had to do to get noticed was win at the local level, guest-star in some of the feeder series and have success and, hopefully, catch the eye of someone looking for The Next Big Thing. In later days, it became all about who you know and how much money you had to get the chance, so the field narrowed a bit.
Josh Berry did it the old-fashioned way.
For the past 10 seasons, he’s been driving pavement late models for JR Motorsports, and quite well, thank you. Last season, he won the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series championship, beating a nation’s worth of drivers over a season-long contest of excellence.
He’s won the biggest late model race in the Southeast, the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway — setting a track record in qualifying, leading every lap and raking in a $44,000 paycheck at the end of 200 laps.
He’s a CARS Racing Tour champion both as a driver and an owner and still leads nearly every category in the series’ history.
In between, thanks to a friendship with Dale Earnhardt Jr. that dates back to the early days of online racing, Berry got the occasional NASCAR Xfinity Series start. He wowed the sport in 2015 with his performance in the fall race at Richmond (Va.) Raceway, chasing the leaders all night and eventually finishing seventh on the same night that Chase Elliott — the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion —earned Chevrolet’s 400th NXS victory.
Following his NASCAR Weekly Series title run — 27 wins in more than 40 starts — Berry got the opportunity he had dreamed about — a half-season in the No. 8 JR Motorsports Chevrolet in the NXS.
In his first 10 starts, Berry won at Martinsville and logged three top-five results and five top-10 finishes. Perhaps his biggest achievement came at Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway in May, however. Never having seen the Monster Mile, Berry finished second in the ARCA Menards Series race, second in the NXS race and made his Cup Series debut on Sunday, taking the Spire Motorsports entry to 30th place.
There’s more to tell about the 30-year-old from Tennessee, but you’ll find out eventually as he continues to make his way forward in the sport.
Who is the next driver to follow this path? He or she might be at your local track right now and might have been plying the trade for several years. It takes a confluence of events to make one’s way forward, and for Berry, everything came together at the right time.
However you cut it up, success is measured in results and Berry has delivered them whenever he’s had the opportunity. I can’t wait for the next such story to present itself.