The CARS Late Model Stock Tour remains Josh Berry’s world and everyone else is just allowed to race in it.
The JR Motorsports driver dominated the Circle Track Warehouse 200 on Saturday at Concord Speedway from the pole and led all but seven laps. This is a follow-up to his 2016 season in which he won five times but missed out on the championship after missing a race due to a NASCAR conflict.
He has nine tour victories overall.
“Ever since we came into the series, we’ve been good,” Berry said. “There’s really not that much different from the cars, it’s just, I guess the style of races and the racetracks fit my driving style a little bit better than some of the other ones. This place is unique for sure. It takes a lot of discipline to run good here, and I think that kind of fits my style, just hitting your marks and being smart. I’m glad to start the year off with a win.”
The victory didn’t come easy however as Austin McDaniel stole the top spot on a late restart with 14 laps to go. The duo raced side-by-side for seven laps before Berry finally broke away from the bottom line.
“Yea, we were strong,” Berry said. “We had been good the whole time we had been here, and we knew that the cautions would come, and my car, I definitely felt like it needed a couple of laps to take off, and that one restart, he (Austin McDaniel) just got a good restart. He got through (Turns) 1 and 2 good, kind of pinned me down through the dogleg, and I got a little loose and lost some momentum. He was able to use his motor a little bit to keep me down there, and I just had to keep wearing him on the outside. Finally, he started to get loose, and I was able to drive by him, but he put up a good fight on the outside.”
McDaniel wanted to race Berry clean but he also didn’t have much of a choice.
“It’s hard to rough someone up from the outside,” McDaniel said. “I might have if I were on the inside, but yeah, we didn’t touch at all, and that’s the way you want to race. There’s only so much you can do from the outside and he raced me clean.
“We qualified well and we had a real good start to our season.”
The most notable incident occurred in Turn 4 on Lap 50 after the mandatory competition caution. Craig Moore, Terry Brooks Jr., Logan Jones and Justin Carroll all piled up, resulting in a red flag. Beyond that, it was a mostly ho-him affair with Berry leading the way.
The complete results can be viewed below.
1.) #88 Josh Berry
2.) #12m Austin McDaniel
3.) #99 Layne Riggs
4.) #44 Justin Johnson
5.) #08 Deac McCaskill
6.) #74 Ronald Hill
7.) #2 Myatt Snider
8.) #2h Cody Haskins
9.) #57 Justin Carroll
10.) #42 Craig Stallard
11.) #28 Chris Hudspeth
12.) #88 Chris Davis
13.) #32 Brandon Grosso
14.) #06 Davin Scites
15.) #98 Stefan Parsons
16.) #8 Trevor Rizzo
17.) #11 Jeff Oakley
18.) #40 C.E. Falk
19.) #1 Craig Moore
20.) #23 Terry Brooks Jr.
21.) #77 Logan Jones
22.) #16 Colby Howard
23.) #88t Robert Tyler
24.) 8A Anthony Alfredo
Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.