Josh Berry carrying confidence after season-best finish at Darlington

Josh Berry just had the best finish of his season at Darlington. P3 behind the winner, Brad Keselowski and P2, Ty Gibbs. It was an impressive showing for the NASCAR Cup Series rookie.

While Berry is a rookie, he is 33 years old. He has a lot of experience racing in the short track ranks. However, this finish didn’t come at a short track. It came at Darlington, the Track Too Tough to Tame.

Josh Berry tamed Darlington. This P3 finish for Berry ties the best finish for a Stewart-Haas Racing driver this season. It is the best non-superspeedway finish for SHR as well.

Berry is now firmly ahead in the Rookie of the Year standings. He put himself up 19 points on Carson Hocevar in the points standings. Berry is 21st overall in points but sits 86 points out of the playoff bubble.

Despite a shaky start, Josh Berry is starting to get into a groove on the race track.

“No, my confidence isn’t shook,” Berry told Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports after the race. “I feel like we’ve had a lot of good days and we just need time, really, that’s it. We’re learning about each other each and every week. We feel like – When you come back to the shop Monday or Tuesday and you start looking at the stuff, you know, you kinda see, well this run we were really fast, this run we were really fast and just, we haven’t put together the full day yet. And we still really haven’t with where we qualified.

“So, I think there’s still a lot of things to continue to work on but overall I think that when our car’s balanced they have speed and when I feel comfortable in the car we have speed and it’s just about us figuring that out from the start of the race weekend to the end, throughout the race and obviously we did a great job of that this weekend and it’s just gonna keep taking work from Rodney and these guys. I got full faith that we’ll get there, we just gotta chip away at it.”