Josh Berry attempts to break down what went wrong on Lap 1 wreck at Darlington

Josh Berry isn’t sure how he wrecked during the first lap of the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday night. While speaking with Matt Weaver of Motorsport, Berry detailed the wreck that prevented him from earning a strong finish.

“It bottomed out five or six times, so I don’t know,” Josh Berry said after the race. “I saw a video of it from the one car while they were fixing it. You can see it throwing up smoke. Not really sure what happened there, if we missed something. You can’t drive these things when they’re hitting the track that hard, especially the first lap when you’re not expecting it.”

Berry, who has qualified for the playoffs for the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career, returned to the race on Lap 121 and finished 128 laps off the pace in 38th place. The wreck has put Berry in danger of being eliminated from the playoffs, as he’s in 16th place and 19 points below the cut line. He needs strong finishes at Gateway and Bristol (or win one of the races) to advance to the Round of 12.

Josh Berry knows he’s ‘still in the game’

“I still feel fine,” Berry said about his chances of advancing. “We just can’t have that happen again. It looked like some guys had some bad nights. We’re still in the game. We just got to have two good races.”

Berry clinched a playoff spot after winning the Las Vegas race in March. This is his second season as a full-time Cup Series driver and first with Wood Brothers Racing. In the regular season, Berry earned five top-10 finishes, including P8 and P9 finishes at Richmond and Daytona, respectively, before the playoffs.

“Our biggest goal was to definitely make the playoffs and accomplish my first career win, which we were able to do,” Berry said at NASCAR’s playoff media day last week. “We want to advance through the Round of 12 and hopefully the Round of 8, and I think those are very possible if we execute and we do the things we know that we can, but I think just more than anything, we just want to be competitive.”