Josh Berry and the No. 21 Menards/Masterforce Tools team turned a fast Ford Mustang Dark Horse and a late two-tire strategy call into a fourth-place finish in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway.
The result marked Berry’s first top-five finish of the season and the seventh of his NASCAR Cup Series career. It also gave him back-to-back top-10 finishes following a seventh-place run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and marked his fourth top-10 of 2026.
Berry started the 350-lap race from 13th on the 0.875-mile Iowa oval and quickly began working his way forward. He cracked the top 10 within the opening five laps and remained in contention there for much of Stage 1 before finishing the segment in 11th place.
After restarting 12th for Stage 2, Berry again worked his way into the top 10 and spent much of the stage racing inside or just outside that group before taking the green-and-white checkered flag in 11th.
Berry lined up 14th to begin the final stage and once again steadily worked his way forward. As the field began cycling through its final round of green-flag pit stops, he climbed as high as second before making his final stop with 53 laps remaining.
Crew chief Miles Stanley made the call for two tires, positioning Berry and the No. 21 team to capitalize on track position during the closing run. Berry returned to the track in 14th and moved into fourth as the remainder of the field completed its stops.
Despite having only two fresh tires against several competitors on four, Berry maintained his position over the final laps to bring the Menards/Masterforce Tools Ford home fourth.
“We had a really solid day,” Berry told reporters after the race. “The car was great.”
Berry said the No. 21 showed plenty of speed during Saturday’s practice session, even though the team wasn’t able to fully capitalize on it in qualifying.
“I feel like everybody on the 21 car did a really good job all weekend,” Berry said. “We just unloaded good and definitely had great long-run pace throughout the race. We just needed it to run long enough to show it, and we were finally able to do that and overcome a lot of things.
“It makes it easy when your cars drive like they did this weekend, and we’ve just got to keep pushing. I think we’ve got a lot of good tracks coming up. I’m excited to get to Richmond next week and keep going after these good finishes.”
Berry and the Wood Brothers Racing team will look to carry the momentum of consecutive top-10 finishes to another short track when the Cup Series heads to Richmond Raceway for Saturday night’s Cook Out 400.
