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Josh Berry’s Nightmare NASCAR Playoff Run Culminates With Fiery Exit At Bristol

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Josh Berry

For all practical matters, Josh Berry needed to win Saturday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway to punch a ticket to the next round of the playoffs.

Unfortunately for the Wood Brothers Racing driver, the only prize he claimed in Thunder Valley was the one for absolutely horrendous luck.

After finishing dead last in both the first and second race of the Round of 16, Berry — remarkably, or unremarkably, depending on how you view it — did the same at Bristol.

Talk about a run of misfortune. It simply doesn’t get any worse than what Berry endured over three weekends in the Round of 16.

It All Went Up In Smoke Literally And Figuratively For Josh Berry At Bristol

Already a longshot to reach the Round of 12 when he arrived at Bristol for the first playoff elimination race, Berry saw any hopes of a miracle outcome go out the window just 80 laps into Saturday night’s race.

However, unlike the past two weekends when Berry went to the garage on the heels of an accident, a mechanical issue proved to be his undoing at Bristol. And not just any mechanical issue — a fiery one.

After riding around for several laps with smoke creeping into the cockpit and fire shooting out from underneath the right front of his car, Berry finally gave up and headed for pit road. By the time he got there, black smoke covered the outside of his No. 21 Ford.

After parking in his pit stall, the first-year Wood Brothers driver quickly bailed out of the smoking machine. And with that, his night and championship aspirations were over.

“I don’t think the fire made it inside the cockpit,” Berry said. “It was just a lot of smoke. It seemed like the fire stayed in the fender well, which is a good thing. But it’s just disappointing again.”

Disappointing and frustrating for the driver who punched a ticket to the playoffs with an early-season victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Everything That Could Have Gone Wrong Did For No. 21 Bunch In The Playoffs

Josh Berry, of course, never imagined when the playoffs began that he would finish dead last in every race of the three-race opening round. Naturally, team co-owner Len Wood didn’t expect the consecutive last-place finishes, either.

“Len was saying that he thought they’d never had two in a row,” Berry said. “And now we’ve got three in a row.”

If there’s any consolation for Berry about his dismal results in the Round of 16, it’s that they didn’t come about due to a lack of speed.

“It’s hard to put into words, but I’d be way more disappointed if we just ran like crap for three weeks,” said Berry, who started 10th at Bristol and third at Darlington, where he crashed out on the first lap of the first playoff race. “We’ve been up front. We’ve qualified well.

“It’s nothing that we’re doing on our own. The cars have been fast. And the performance has been good. If we just had a little bit of luck, I feel like we could be in a much better situation.”

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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