Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Homestead Media Availability
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Josh Berry, driver of the No 21 DEX Imaging Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Wood Brothers Racing, is coming off his first NASCAR Cup Series win last week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He stopped by the Homestead-Miami Speedway infield media center to talk about his week so far and what lies ahead in tomorrow’s race.
JOSH BERRY, No. 21 DEX Imaging Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW DIFFERENT IS IT FOR YOU TO FEEL LIKE YOU CAN EXPERIMENT NOW AND HOW OPTIMISTIC ARE YOU THERE COULD BE MULTIPLE WINS BEYOND? “I think initially, I mean it’s obviously a weight off your shoulders. Aside from maybe the guys you would consider to be the real championship favorites, the majority of the garage’s biggest goal in the season is to make the playoffs and get a win. To accomplish that is a big weight off our shoulders. I think it kind of validates a lot of the things that we’re doing and we’ve done over the offseason to prepare and start this season and be competitive. I feel like three out of the first five races, I would say, we were super competitive and in the mix, so I think, for us, we’re just gonna try to continue that trend and keep doing the things that we’re doing. I feel like if you would have looked at the schedule from my point, I mean, Phoenix and Vegas were probably two of the biggest question marks I had going into this. Obviously, the Penske cars have been really strong at those places, but I didn’t have great results there last year, so going into this next stretch of schedule I think there are a lot of good tracks coming up for us and a lot of tracks I ran pretty well at last year, so I think there should be more opportunities.”
HOW HAS THE LAST WEEK BEEN DOING THE MEDIA ROUNDS AND EMBRACING THE SPOTLIGHT? “It’s been good. It’s been a busy week. I talked to a lot of people and did plenty of podcasts and interviews. Taylor kept me pretty busy this week, but honestly it was all good and the best thing about it all is I feel like we were able to complete everything on the competition side that we wanted to, to make sure that we’re prepared for this weekend. Winning a Cup race is a big deal. I definitely felt that over the course of the week, but I’m excited to get here and get back to racing.”
CAN YOU ELABORATE ON WHAT WENT INTO THAT THROWBACK SCHEME YOU RELEASED ON THURSDAY? “It’s an amazing story. When you go to drive for the Wood Brothers, you get story after story after story of the history and the things that they’ve done, and the Jim Clark Indianapolis 500 win is something that came up pretty often. I think that throwback has been in the works for a while, but, to me, the biggest thing is Leonard, when we unveiled that Thursday, Leonard basically his exact words were, more or less, it’s one of the best memories he’s ever had in racing, and I think that shows you how cool that really is and what it means to them to have that relationship with Ford and go to the Indianapolis 500 and obviously pit the car and win it, but the effort and the ingenuity that Leonard himself and those guys had into that win makes it a really special moment for them, so it’s awesome to be able to honor that.”
HAVE YOU GUYS TALKED AT ALL ABOUT YOU PITTING IN A PENSKE PIT STALL IF YOU HAD AN ISSUE LIKE BELL DID LAST WEEK? “I would think so. We haven’t had any specific conversation about it, but generally I feel like NASCAR kind of clarified the rules and what the expectations are, and I feel like the biggest thing is we want to keep the wheels on these race cars. Honestly, I feel like the majority of pit road, if someone was in that situation, you’re still gonna get a penalty. Whether it’s under yellow or green, you’re gonna get a penalty, so honestly I feel like most of us could probably stop in most people’s boxes and they would help us out. The biggest thing is you hope if you’re in that situation somebody would help you, and you will return the favor. A lot has been made out of it, but honestly the biggest thing is it’s a safety issue. We want to keep the wheels on. We want to keep the gas cans on pit road and things like that. It’s just a unique scenario and honestly it was a pretty heads-up move from the 20 team.”
WHAT IS THE ART OF SAVING TIRES IN THE CUP SERIES? “I don’t know. It’s a hard balance in Cup Racing because obviously track position is so important, but I think the biggest thing is you just have to play to the strengths of your car. If you’re in the position to manage that a little bit, then it seems to pay off in the long run. I mean, just being smooth, giving up a little bit on entry, giving up a little bit on exit and just making sure you’re trying to not slide the tires, keep the car underneath you and be smooth.”
HOW DO YOU KNOW THEN WHEN TO GO FOR IT? “I think, from my personal experience and I think back to my years of racing short tracks, a lot of times if you’re saying you’re gonna go 90 percent, really by the end of the run your 90 percent kind of ends up being your 100 percent. I’ve never been one that’s like, ‘OK, I’m gonna be patient here and now I’m gonna go.’ A lot of times when you go, you go slower than when you were just being patient, so I think at these places it’s about staying under the limit of the tire a little bit and a lot of times towards the end of the run you don’t really do anything different, it’s just people seem to start coming back to you.”
UNDER THIS PLAYOFF FORMAT WE’VE SEEN HOW IMPORTANT EVERY POINT IS. DOES HAVING A WIN MEAN YOU MIGHT BE WILLING TO TAKE CHANCES AND DO THINGS LIKE TRYING TO WIN A STAGE IF OTHER CARS PIT AND THE OPPORTUNITY IS THERE? “Yeah, I think that will give us some flexibility and a lot of times that depends on how you’re running. To me, my personal opinion even going back to Xfinity racing, if you feel like you have a car that can go out and win the race, I think you have to call the race that way. That’s how I approach it, but if you don’t, maybe if you’re a 10th-15th place car and you have the opportunity to potentially get a playoff point, but even some more stage points, I think that opens up the door for that for sure.”
WHAT WOULD MAKE IT A GOOD SATURDAY TODAY AT HOMESTEAD? “I think for practice, for us, not necessarily worried as much about the speed of the car, just how it drives. If it stays consistent or pretty consistent over the course of the run, I think, for me, it’s important to be able to be pretty versatile here, being able to run the bottom, the middle to the top. I don’t see myself focusing that heavily on just running the wall the entire practice. I want to be able to run multiple lanes because I feel like that becomes so important at times in these races, so I’ll really just focus on that and trust your instinct on how the car feels and if it drives good. Usually, most of the time if it drives good and feels good, then you race good. And then obviously qualifying is an important part of this. I think, for us, we want to be in the top 10. We’ve been able to do that the last couple of weeks. We qualified 11th here last year, which gives me some optimism as well, so hopefully we can execute that today.”
WHAT IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THIS PLACE AND DO YOU SEE THIS TRACK AS A DIFFERENTIATOR IN DRIVER TALENT? “I don’t know. Obviously, I’ve liked Homestead and honestly the Xfinity results never were really indicative of how we ran. I felt like we ran better than we finished and last year in the Cup car I thought it was a really solid race. I think you see the guys that can run the wall a little bit better than others, that are a little bit more committed to it, and then some of us see it, like I said a minute ago, that you need to be a little bit more versatile and be able to run different lanes. So everybody kind of has their own strategy, but I feel like whenever we see tire wear and things like we see here, really the cars that drive good and stay underneath of you for a long run really show out just as much as the driver’s talent.”
WHAT’S IT LIKE TO COME TO A TRACK FOR THE FIRST TIME AS A CUP SERIES WINNER? “It’s been cool. I mean, I’m obviously still kind of soaking that part of it in getting started here at Homestead, but just winning races in the Cup Series is a big deal and it’s so incredibly difficult, so I’m not taking that moment for granted. At the same time, I want to keep pushing forward and keep getting better and have more opportunities at this, so I don’t feel like this is the last one. I don’t think that Sunday was considered probably an upset, at least, but not a fluke with how we’ve been running and I feel like we can keep getting better and keep pushing forward and have other opportunities.”
YOU WOULDN’T CONSIDER YOURSELF A FAVORITE TO GO DEEP IN THE PLAYOFFS IF NOT WIN IT ALL? WHY? “I think, for me, it’s an experience side of things, like taking all this in for the first time. I just won my first race on Sunday, so experiencing that was a big deal, but I don’t know. I’ve just never been one as a driver to be real specific with setting goals because your performance on track and how you feel like it’s going is what really matters to you most personally. I mean, you can run well and have a mistake on pit road and not get the finish, but you still ran well, so, to me, I’ve always had the most success of just taking it week to week and preparing the best I can each week and taking that approach and not necessarily worry about as much of the finishes, but more so how you run and I think if we can establish that and be more competitive and up front and have good Saturdays and race well, that the opportunities are gonna come. Once you get in the playoffs, I haven’t dove deep into the schedule and what we think. I’m sure Miles has done more so of that, but the first couple of rounds are just about execution more than anything from what I watch. If you can just go out and have solid races, get stage points, finish, don’t have the big issue, we most definitely would be able to be in contention to advance through the rounds.”
HOW HAS HAVING A DIFFERENT CREW CHIEF THE LAST THREE SEASONS HELPED IN WORKING WITH MILES THIS YEAR AND WHAT MORE DO YOU STILL HAVE TO WORK THROUGH? “I think that’s a really good point, and honestly over the last couple years or few years, I feel like that’s something that’s been difficult to manage. Obviously, I’ve got a lot of experience working with a bunch of different guys and when we went through the process of talking with Miles and it gave me a lot of specific points of what I was looking for out of him and what worked for me and what didn’t work for me or whatever, but it’s definitely tough when you’re going up against guys that have been together three or four years now and they have seven, eight races at each one of these tracks working with each other. It comes a little easier to be able to fine-tune and focus on certain things that you want from your race car, so I’m excited. That’s why this start of the season is so important to us. You just kind of take it week by week and just build and learn and not every race is probably gonna go perfect, but we’ve been off to a really good start and I’m excited to keep working with him as we progress through the summer.”
EVERY POINTS RACE THIS YEAR HAS BEEN WON BY A DRIVER WITH THE LAST NAME STARTING WITH B. WHAT IS IT BEHIND ALL OF YOU GUYS? “I don’t know. That’s just a funny stat, a funny coincidence. I guess if your last name starts with a B, you’re feeling pretty good this weekend at least.”
IF NOT YOU, WHO IS THE NEXT B THAT WINS? “Ryan Blaney. He’s been super fast every week and just kind of had some misfortune. He’s been a great teammate to me, so I’d say he’s most definitely in line to get one sooner or later.”
