The 33-year-old native of Hendersonville, Tenn., stepped in Stewart-Haas Racing’s No. 4 Ford this year following the retirement of star Kevin Harvick and his subsequent move to the Fox Sports NASCAR TV booth.
It’s been a rough ride through the 2024 season’s first four races for Berry, with no start better than 14th (Atlanta) and no finish better than 20th (Las Vegas). The Las Vegas is also the only one so far Berry has been able to finish on the lead lap.
Saturday at Bristol, however, Berry was able to showcase his talent on the series’ first visit to track shorter than mile in length.
“It’s been a little bit disappointing,” Berry said of his 2024 season. “Even when I started this going back to last summer people asked me all the time what my expectations were, and I always said that I expected it to be hard and it is hard. Cup racing is hard.
“So, with that side of it, I think each race we’ve had little-ish different things happen that maybe hurt our finish or not, but I feel like when we get everything put together and the car is handling like I want and we execute, we have speed, we make progress, we’re faster.
“For me, I made a couple of mistakes over the last few weeks. Spinning out in qualifying at Phoenix put us really far behind all these guys. Having a mistake like that puts you really far behind and makes your day look worse than it really is.”
Berry was only 26th fastest in Saturday’s practice but his No. 4 Ford had a lot of speed when it came to qualifying.
He ended up fifth quick in Group B in the first round and fell in second behind pole-winner Ryan Blaney in the final round to secure his best start of the year.
As a rookie, Berry said one of his most important jobs is developing a strong relationship with his team. As that progresses, he is confident the performance will improve.
“That’s where I feel like I need to grow a little bit. Last year (running a partial schedule), you’re on borrowed time each race,” he said. “We didn’t know which race they were coming back or not and we kind of just raced.
“We didn’t really think about any of that stuff and now whenever you’re trying to build, you build piece by piece into something bigger.
“This is an important time for all of us right now to learn each other and just do a little better job of that, and I think it’ll come with time.”
Saturday was a strong start in the right direction.
