Berry: ‘Don’t Think It Will Change Too Terribly Much’
HAMPTON, Ga. — The inaugural In-Season Challenge Tournament for the NASCAR Cup Series kicks off this weekend at EchoPark Speedway.
The top 32 drivers are seeded into a bracket and will face off one-one one over the next five races, with the final driver standing after the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, earning the $1 million top prize.
The best-finishing driver of each of this week’s 16 pairings, advances to next weekend.
One of those faceoffs features Josh Berry and John Hunter Nemechek. Nemecheck was seeded 12th, while Berry holds the 21st seed. Berry talked about how the iin-season tournament may or may not change strategy this weekend.
“I think all of us will be paying attention to it and who we’re paired up against and how they’re doing,” said the driver of the Wood Brothers Racing Ford. “It should be interesting to follow, for sure. Obviously, a drafting style track will be a lot about just making it to the finish. That will play a big part of that. It will be hard to have a perfect bracket with a place like Atlanta because you never know. An accident can take you out or something like that, but it will be exciting to follow. I have not really overly thought that much about it, but we’ll pay attention to how John Hunter’s race is going compared to ours and hopefully we can come out on top.”
Berry realizes anything can happen on any given weekend, and that the 1.54 superspeedway at the former Atlanta Motor Speedway is a bit of an unknown.
“Obviously, all of us want to win it. It would be really cool,” Berry said. “It’s a really cool thing to follow and be a part of. I think anything can happen any week. Atlanta is gonna be a little bit of a wild card like I said earlier. It’s a drafting track and the accidents that can happen there, but even when you go to a road course or something like that, I mean you never know what can happen.
“If somebody has an issue, gets run off the track or gets spun out on a restart it will change, so it’s gonna be tough to make a perfect bracket in that thing because there are gonna be a lot of things that happen that are unexpected.”
Berry does not believe the tournament will change the racing dramatically.
“I don’t think it’ll change too terribly much. I think that each individual is gonna pay attention to who they’re up against and how they’re race is going,” Berry said. “I’m sure over the course of the next month there’s gonna be battles late in the race that are matchups that they got paired pre-race that will be interesting to follow. I don’t think any of us are thinking that we need to be more or less aggressive.
“Obviously, I think Atlanta is gonna be a big opportunity for a lot of people to try to win a race and make it into the playoffs, so I think the aggression is gonna be higher more so for that than this tournament, but I’m sure there will be some interesting battles over the course of the next month.”
Berry is 16th in points with one victory in his first season with Wood Brothers Racing.
“It’s been a really good first season with the Wood Brothers. I’ve just really enjoyed working with them and being a part of the whole organization,” Berry said. “Getting the win earlier in the year was a lot of excitement, but we’ve had a lot of good runs over the course of the year, a lot to learn from and look at, and I think we have a lot of room to improve and get a little more consistent.
“Heading into the playoffs, I think we’re a team that we feel like if we go out and execute like we know we can, that we’re gonna be able to make our way through the playoffs a little bit. It’s been a lot of fun this year, for sure.”
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