Josh Berry Is Still Looking For A Ride In NASCAR’s Money Game

The Ride he Thought he Had

At first the match seemed to be made in heaven. Berry gave the team its 101st win, and his first, just five races into the 2025 season. He and the team made NASCAR’s Playoffs, and Berry continued to build on his resume.

This season, however, has been anything but a barn burner. Through the first half of 2026, Berry had just one top-10 finish, that coming in the season-opening Daytona 500. Then in June during an otherwise routine midweek teleconference, Berry dropped a bombshell.

“I’ll just go ahead and put it out there that I will not be back in the 21 car next year,” he said. “I’m obviously disappointed about that. They’ve been amazing to work with. They’re amazing people and it’s been such a great opportunity.”

Since then, Berry has been searching for opportunities, but the 35-year-old admitted, ironically during another midweek teleconference this week, he has made little progress in finding a ride for next season.

“I don’t feel any closer now than I did two months ago if I’m being honest,” he said.

When Speed Isn’t Enough

According to Berry, his struggles to find a new team may be largely due to NASCAR’s business landscape, one in which funding can be just as important as performance.

“We’ve had conversations,” he said. “We’ve had good ones. We’ve had bad ones. We’ve had ones that we thought had potential. We had ones that we sat down, and they asked for three million dollars, so it’s been a little bit of a challenge working through all of that.”

It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially for someone whose only work outside of driving a racecar was working as a bank teller.

Sure, results matter, and Berry’s performance has improved dramatically in recent weeks. He finished seventh and fourth in his last two races. But these days, it apparently isn’t enough to say, ‘I deserve a ride because I’m Josh Berry.’

It’s more like: Give me a car and I’ll prove I deserve the car.

The answer from some teams, apparently: That’s great. Where’s your checkbook?

“I don’t want to get into too many details about my opinions on everything necessarily, but it’s a tough battle.,” he said. “The system is difficult. The business model is difficult for the Truck and O’Reilly Series and the Cup Series to a point, but it’s just difficult. “

Berry understands the business. He just happens to be trapped inside it.

“It’s a challenge,” he admits. “I think that the funding is an important piece. I mean, a majority of the teams it’s hard to even get a conversation unless you already know you have at least something in place there to bring to the table. That’s just the nature of how it is. Hopefully, all three series continue to grow and it changes and hopefully in years to come that continues to go the other direction or get better.”

Berry is Racing for his Career Again

For his immediate future, Berry apparently needs two things: go fast and find $3 million. He knows how to do the first one. The second one is proving more difficult.

“I know that and I’m not uncomfortable in that scenario,” he said. “I mean, I’ve done it plenty of times. I’ve been in this scenario plenty of times, whether it was in the O’Reilly Series or the Cup opportunities with HMS and the Cup opportunity when SHR was shutting down.

“… I don’t feel uncomfortable at all about what we’re up against. It’s just about finding a way to get things going the right way, continue these good results and hopefully something materializes from it.”

So for now, Berry will keep doing what he has always done. He’ll strap into the race car, put his head down and try to make somebody notice.

“Hopefully, we can keep putting ourselves up front and on TV and in the news and in the media and hopefully that phone call comes,” he said.

Berry has been here before. He fought his way up from the short tracks, caught the attention of Dale Earnhardt Jr., and eventually became exactly what the Wood Brothers were looking for.

Now he’s looking for someone else to decide he’s ripe for the picking.

Only this time, evidently, he may need to bring $3 million with him.