Kevin Harvick retired at the end of the 2023 Cup Series season after spending 23 years in the top tier. He is amongst the top most cream of icons in the game virtue of his consistency over two decades. Naturally, there were high expectations for Josh Berry – the rookie who replaced him in the #4 Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) Ford Mustang. After 12 races in 2024, how well has Berry held up?
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Harvick’s final season was by no means his best. And yet, Berry’s numbers wane in comparison to it. The retired driver had 3 top-5s and 5 top-10s after the race in Kansas last year. Berry, on the other hand, is yet to finish inside the top 10. His best-ever result came in Richmond, where he finished in 11th place. To his relief, neither have a victory lane visit by the season’s one-third mark.
Though it doesn’t put much weight on his case, Berry did manage to score better positions than Harvick did on certain tracks including Talladega and Dover. Going forward, the hope will be that he does so in more venues. In an interview last month, he reasoned why it wasn’t fair to be comparing his numbers with those of a veteran like Harvick.
“It’s just going to take time, man,” he quipped. “I told Rodney not too long ago, Kevin [Harvick] was 800-and-something starts off racing, and I’m in the teens. It’s going to take me a little bit of time to get acclimated and to eliminate some of the mistakes that I’ve made at the start of the season.” Unfortunately, the way things are at the SHR camp, time is the one thing that Berry does not have.
The worst is not yet over for Stewart-Haas Racing as rumors of charter sale circulate
Over the last month, talks about team co-owner Tony Stewart downsizing SHR to a three-car operation have been gaining strength. The reason behind the drastic decision could very well be the performance slump that the outfit has fallen into in the last 3-4 years. Worsening the climate, the most recent rumor to get into the papers is of Stewart putting more on the market than just a single charter.
According to Sportsnaut’s Matt Weaver, he has put up the team’s building and operations for sale in addition to its charters. He hasn’t yet signed a manufacturer alliance with any of the car makers for 2025 either. These are troubling times brewing at the SHR camp with the need to perform now higher than ever. The ball is in the court of the new Kevin Harvick – Josh Berry.
