There’s an old saying that to achieve success, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” Josh Berry falls into that category. He not only became good friends after years of online racing with Dale Earnhardt Jr., but Junior has also been the most influential person in Berry’s lengthy racing career.
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Berry drove for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports for more than a decade in late model racing, earning 100 wins, with 95 in the late model ranks and five in the NASCAR Xfinity Series (including finishing 4th in 2022 and 11th in 2023).
Because JR Motorsports does not have a NASCAR Cup program, Earnhardt lobbied Stewart-Haas Racing to take on Berry as a rookie Cup driver last year. And when SHR closed up shop after last season, Berry moved on to the legendary Wood Brothers Racing (WBR) for 2025 and beyond.
Berry has fit in well with WBR, including earning his first Cup Series win just under a month ago in Las Vegas (and finishing fourth in the race before that in Phoenix).
On a recent episode of the Rubbin Is Racing podcast, the 34-year-old Berry talked about how he got started in racing, followed by getting to know Earnhardt and the friendship that blossomed from that.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have some amazing opportunities over the course of my career,” Berry told Rubbin Is Racing. “I grew up in middle Tennessee and raced go-karts, 4-cylinder cars, Legend cars primarily at the Nashville Fairgrounds racing on the quarter mile for years.”
“The last couple years of me doing that there, I got into racing online in what became iRacing. It was a way to race and be competitive, and it didn’t cost a lot of money like racing a real car did.”
“Ultimately, I got real fortunate to meet Dale Jr. on there and became a good friend of his. He asked who I was, what I did, some about my life, and what I was doing and what I was racing. I sent him some videos, and ultimately he asked me, ‘Hey man, what do you want to do?”
“And I told him I’d really like to drive a late model because I grew up watching these guys race late models on the five-eighths mile and dreamed of having that opportunity.”
A Strong Test Led to the Next Phase of Berry’s Career
“He put together a test in his late model program in 2010 at Motor Mile Speedway in Virginia. The test went well, I ultimately moved to North Carolina, and I wound up racing for JR Motorsports full-time in the late model program. That transpired into over a decade of racing those cars all over North Carolina and Virginia.”
“Junior Motorsports had 100 wins, of which five of those were Xfinity and 95 in late model stock, kind of all over, all the big races and championships. Ultimately, that led to me getting an opportunity with JRM in the Xfinity Series,” Berry added.
It looked like Berry’s big chance had finally come around when he raced in the Cup Series last year as a rookie for SHR, finishing 27th in the final season standings.
Earnhardt had predicted success for Berry in the Cup ranks in 2022, tweeting, “Josh Berry is a Cup champion waiting for a Cup owner who wants to be a Cup champion owner.”
But after SHR unexpectedly closed its doors at the end of last season, Dale Jr. played yet another key role by lobbying the Wood Brothers to hire Berry as their Cup Series driver. In so doing, Berry joined a long list of greats who drove for the Wood Brothers, including Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Elliott Sadler, Bill Elliott, and others.
And unless Dale Jr. eventually starts his own Cup team, it’s looking like Josh Berry, who has been up and down in this season’s first eight races, has found a long-term home with the Wood Brothers.
