Where the road goes next for NASCAR Cup Series driver and Hendersonville native Josh Berry is anyone's guess.
Berry's foremost among them.
The 33-year-old is used to driving around mostly in ovals, but his mind has been racing in circles since he learned on May 28 that his team, Stewart-Haas Racing, would cease NASCAR operations at the end of the 2024 season.
The not-so-great news landed less than a year after Berry signed with Stewart-Haas, for whom he took over former Cup champion Kevin Harvick's No. 4 Ford Mustang, making him a full-time Cup driver for the first time.
"It's a challenge we didn't expect, for sure," Berry told The Tennessean a few weeks before returning home to race in the Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday. "I'd love to say we are focused on this year, but the reality of it is, we're all trying to find out what's next for us, too.
"This time a year ago I knew I was driving the No. 4 car, and that was already taken care of. Now we're kind of going down the same path again, which is unfortunate."
Josh Berry coming home to Nashville to race
That has left Berry and his team with the task of navigating every day with one eye on this season and another on trying to find a landing spot in the Cup Series for next season.
"We're still trying to do all we can to be as prepared as we can week in and week out, and have good results," he said. "If we do that, I think a lot of it will take care of itself."
Returning home to race at Nashville Superspeedway, where Berry watched races as a kid, will offer a bit of reprieve.
Family and friends will be able to watch him make his living live, for one. He'll be in a familiar place, for two.
"It's definitely a little more fun that weekend, going back to what I consider my home track," said Berry, who has four top-10 finishes this season, including two thirds.
Taylor Swift, Josef Newgarden and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Berry attended Pope John Paul II Preparatory School with two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and two-time IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden but hardly remembers it.
"I'm sure one day out paths will cross," Berry said.
He attended Hendersonville High School with global pop star and 14-time Grammy Award winner Taylor Swift, but said he never really knew her.
"It's a funny story, and that's really the extent of it," Berry said.
One person the NASCAR driver does know is Dale Earnhardt Jr., whom he first met virtually in 2008, when he was racing Legend Cars at Nashville Fairgrounds and working as a teller at Volunteer State Bank.
"I definitely learned about life in general with that experience," Berry said of being a teller.
Two years after they met while competing in DMP Online Racing, a simulator used as a training tool by many drivers, Earnhardt signed Berry to his JR Motorsports team to drive late model cars.
He eventually drove Xfinity cars for that team.
"It was a life-changing opportunity," Berry said. "I won 100 races for Dale over the course of 10 years or something. ... He believed in me, for whatever reason ... and paid attention to some of the racing I was doing at the time.
"It was kind of by chance, 'Hey, you want to come test this car for me, let's see how it goes?' If I don't do a good job that day then I'm probably not here right now."
Cup Series was half empty
There were many times during his trek from short tracks to late-model stock to the ARCA Series to the Craftsman Truck Series to the Xfinity Series that Berry believed his goal of reaching the Cup Series might be out of reach.
NEXT STEP?Stewart-Haas Racing closing after 2024, and what it means for Hendersonville's Josh Berry
COMING SOON:How to buy tickets for Ally 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway
HE'S NO. 2:Hendersonville's Josh Berry, driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr., finishes second in NASCAR Xfinity race
The kid who began by racing go-karts when he was 8 years old at tracks in Shelbyville and Dickson had seven Xfinity races to his name over four seasons when he disappeared from that level for four years, after the 2017 season.
"I kind of made peace in a way that I probably wasn't going to drive Xfinity cars again, let alone Cup cars," Berry said. "I remember people asking me, 'When are you going to get an Xfinity car again?'
"My answer always was, 'Probably never. This is probably what I'm going to be is a short-track racer.' I embraced that. I loved it."
Berry would love to know where the road will lead next. For now, though, the road back home to Nashville and the Ally 400 will do.
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter)@paulskrbina. Follow his workhere.
