Wood Brothers fires back at NASCAR insider over Carson Hocevar, Josh Berry comment

“Trying to remember if we ever got wrecked for absolutely no reason by the 77 but I’m coming up empty,” the Wood Brothers social media account responded to Gluck, a tinge of sarcasm detected. Even if Hocevar never wronged Berry, he did the Wood Brothers dirty, and they got their revenge at Sonoma.

Now, the question will become whether or not NASCAR decides to punish the No. 21 team due to the comment, which could read as an admission to purposefully wrecking Hocevar. It’s certainly a possibility.

Regardless, Josh Berry stood up for the Wood Brothers team as a whole at Sonoma, striking at an opportune time to payback Carson Hocevar. That’ll earn him some points from the guys in the garage, for sure.

More on the NASCAR Cup Series, Sonoma Raceway

While Josh Berry and Carson Hocevar were getting tangled up, Shane van Gisbergen dominated and won the Sonoma NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday. That’s two wins in a row and three wins on the season for SVG, who’s exceeding expectations in 2025.

In the NextGen era, we have seen F1 champions try the Cup Series. We have seen talent from Supercars, IndyCar, endurance racing, and more. None of them have been as fast and as far ahead of the competition as van Gisbergen.

Three wins tie him with Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, and Christopher Bell for the most on the year. Sunday was a butt-whooping and sent a message to the rest of the field – if they want to compete with SVG on the road, they need to step up their game. 

97 laps led Sunday out of 110. The only time that Shane van Gisbergen was not leading was when he flipped the stages. And still, he pitted early in Stage 2 and was able to drive back up to the front and beat Larson for the stage win. That is unheard of in modern-day road course racing. 

SVG was compared to Michael Jordan by Chase Briscoe. He was frankly more impressive and more dominant today than he was at Mexico City or Chicago, in the opinion of many. This is a track that the entire Cup Series field knows better than he does. Drivers like Larson, Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick, and Daniel Suárez are expected to perform well, but Shane van Gisbergen topped them all.

— On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this article.