0
0
Story and Photo By Ronald Young Myracenews
(North Wilkesboro, NC) Josh Berry is not sure how the ‘chase format’ announced last week to determine a NASCAR champion will ultimately be received by the fans and teams but he is certain that his team needs to improve performance if they are to be a serious contender.
Gone this season is the playoff-style elimination format that crowned a champion based on a one race ‘winner- take-all-format’ among four drivers. In its place will be a system that will pare down the field to the 16 drivers accumulating the most points over the first 26 races into a ‘chase’ format very similar to the format used from 2004-2013. The champion will be the driver who accumulates the most points during the final 10 races.
The changes come after an extensive review that included collaboration between owners, drivers, OEMs, tracks, broadcast partners and the fans. The enhanced format centers on a larger sample size for a championship, bolsters the importance of each race and rewards consistency while still rewarding wins.
“I think it’s a good change and we’ll see how it all sorts out,” Berry said recently. “For us, the goals are still the same – just go out every week and run the best we can and the points will take care of themselves if we do that.”
“We know that we’re gonna have to be a little bit better than we were last year. I don’t know exactly where we would have ended up with the new system versus last year, but we just need to be more consistent.”
In 2025 Berry finished 16th in points but would have been further down in the standings had the 2026 format been in place. Berry qualified for the 2025 playoffs after winning the race at Las Vegas in March.
For those of you curious, according to a NASCAR press release and multiple independent sources Kyle Larson would have still captured the title last year using the new point system. “ “I think it should be exciting. It seems like that public perception has been that a lot of fans wanted a different format for the Chase. It should be exciting for them to follow and, for us, like I said earlier, it’s really just business as usual.” Berry said during a recent test session at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Berry enters his second season driving for Wood Brothers Racing after spending his first year in the Cup Series with Stewart-Haas Racing. Berry feels that having the same crew chief(Miles Stanley) and team members will help performance.
”For me personally, this is the first time I’ve ever had the same crew chief the second year, so even being here today it just feels like I’m picking right up from last year,” Berry said. You’re not learning new people with new communication and learning new guys, so I think that’s a positive for us and we’re excited to keep going today and get to Bowman Gray in a couple of weeks.”
With the 2026 season beginning soon, Berry thinks the racing could change on the track just because the new system will reward finishes over the ‘win and your in” mentality prevalent in previous years.
“Wins still matter a lot, but it’ll be interesting to see if that changes a lot of people’s perceptions of how they race, especially when you look at superspeedway races and things like that,” Berry added. “If you only have to win, that changes how you race versus if you go to Daytona or Talladega and walk out of there with a top five and some points would be a good day in this new system, so I think it should change how people think. It’s hard to say if that will show up on track or not, but, ultimately, you’ve got to limit your bad days if you want to have a chance at this. I think it should mean consistency and finishing races is more important.”
The debate on which system is best will begin to take shape in the Daytona 500 on February 15th.
