NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 9, 2026

Josh Berry

Pit Lane Interview

Q. Josh Berry's first top 5 of the season comes at a good time at a good track for you. Nice job today.

JOSH BERRY: Yeah, thanks. I feel like everybody on the 21 car did a really good job all weekend. We just unloaded good. I felt like we left a little bit out there for qualifying, and definitely had great long run pace throughout the race. Just needed it to run long enough to show it, and we were finally able to do that and overcome a lot of things.

Didn't have a great day on pit road, struggled a little bit firing off. But once we got going, I felt like we were really good and definitely a good day.

I love coming here. It makes it easy when your cars drive like they did this weekend, and we've just got to keep pushing. I think we've got a lot of good tracks coming up. Excited to get to Richmond next week and keep going after these good finishes.

Q. I heard you say free a couple of times. Is that the main issue, charging into Turn 1 with a free race car?

JOSH BERRY: Yeah, just struggled at times with rear grip. I felt like we held on pretty good compared to most, but just had to get the car tightened up, and I think second half of the race we got that.

That just allows you to move around and run the different lanes, make passes, set up passes and trust the rear of the car.

Like I said, we did a great job executing that, and just thank you to Menards and everybody at the Wood Brothers for all they do and everybody at Ford Racing. We'll go next week and try to do it again.