Josh Berry Talks SHR Sadness, Arguing with Rodney Childers & Teaming With Caitlin Clark

Josh Berry has had an unbelievable rookie year. Unbelievable in that no one before the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series campaign would have believed if you told them that the Tennessee native and his three Stewart-Haas Racing teammates would all be looking for jobs halfway through the season because the organization was dramatically downsizing to a one-car team in 2025. But that’s exactly what happened.

The 33-year-old discussed the unexpected situation during an interview on the “Beating and Banging” YouTube channel while promoting his upcoming sponsorship with Panini featuring the Caitlin Clark Collection at the July 21 race and NASCAR’s return to the oval at Indianapolis. He detailed the environment at the company since the announcement and candidly admitted how it hasn’t been easy.

“Well, it’s honestly the whole experience for me, I mean, given everything that’s going on, it’s sad in a way because it’s such a great place to work and it’s such a great place to race at,” Berry said. “I think I might’ve said that the last time we spoke, right? How the culture and everything about it. It’s a great race team and there’s great people there.

“The hardest part of that situation was probably when we just didn’t know what was going to happen early, right? We didn’t know if they were downsizing. Are we losing one charter, two charters, three charters? We didn’t know. That was the hardest part because really we didn’t know what direction to go.

“And there was so much speculation and distraction at the time and once we finally knew the finality of what was going to happen, it honestly got easier because then we knew — hey, this is going away. We’re going to all go different ways more than likely, but just buckle down and do the best we can and I think that’s what we’ve been able to do.”

Josh Berry Discusses Chicago Argument With Rodney Childers

Under the leadership of crew chief Rodney Childers, Josh Berry and the team have buckled down. The results prove it. In the last 10 races, the No. 4 car has recorded four top-10 results, including a couple inside the top 5 — a pair of third-place finishes at Darlington and New Hampshire.  

However, in that same timeframe, Berry also scored a pair of 36th-place finishes at Gateway and Chicago. Racing through the streets of the Windy City was a day the driver would just as soon forget as frustrations over boiled, resulting in a heated disagreement between him and his crew chief.

“Yeah, there was so much going on in that race,” he said. “And the extent of it really was we kind of had a little miscommunication, a little confusion towards the end of the race about what kind — if we wanted to run dry tires or wet tires.

“And really the extent of it was, Rodney was relying on me to tell him and I was relying on Rodney to tell me what he thought. And we just kind of disagreed and had a little bit of a moment about it. That race is so tough, especially with all the conditions we were battling, I think just a little bit of frustration came out after having a tough day, but really that’s been it for us.”

Berry and Childers Pitched Working Together in 2025 to Multiple Teams

Berry said he and Childers have developed a strong relationship in less than a year and the veteran crew chief has been a tremendous leader throughout all the turmoil at the organization and pointed out their best results during the trying times.

However, he knows that guidance won’t last much longer because their working relationship will wrap up at the end of this season.

“Rodney and I have had a great relationship and we had tons of conversations over the last couple of months with a lot of different race teams,” he said. “And, unfortunately, it just didn’t align for us to go together.

“I do hate that it didn’t work out in a way, but we really enjoyed working with each other. And I owe a lot to Rodney for getting me to this point and the job that he’s done this year. That’s the thing about all this really is like it could have easily went so bad and it hasn’t. It really hasn’t and we’ve continued to get better and better and I know that we’ll continue on that path until Phoenix.”

And then the pair will go their separate ways. But they’ll always remember the 2024 Cup campaign because they battled alongside each other through one of the most challenging situations in their careers.