NASCAR’s short track swing continues this weekend at the “Action Track,” Richmond Raceway in Virginia. Richmond is a 0.75-mile D-shaped oval with an aged surface that chews up tires. The turns carry 14 degrees of banking, the frontstretch eight degrees, and the backstretch just two. Tire management figures to be a central storyline. Goodyear brings the same left side and right side Racing Eagle combination, tire code D-5262 left, D-5256 right, that teams ran at Martinsville in March and North Wilkesboro last month, with the right side also seeing duty at Bowman Gray Stadium and Phoenix this season. This means that while the track is similar in shape and banking to Iowa, where the series raced last weekend, the falloff means the tracks race somewhat differently. In handicapping Richmond I’ll be focused on overall short track performance in 2026 as well as driver history at Richmond.
Josh Berry hasn’t had a great 2026. After finishing ninth in the Daytona 500 and 10th at Martinsville, he went fourteen races without a Top 10 finish. In fact, in those 14 races he only had one Top 20 finish. He currently sits 30th in the points standings and has been informed he won’t be returning to Wood Brothers next season. That said, there is some hope for Berry this weekend.
Berry has always been known as a short track guy. In the CARS Late Model Stock Tour he won 19 races in 51 starts between 2015 and 2021. In 2021 Berry ran a part time schedule with JR Motor Sports and Jordan Anderson Racing in the Xfinity Series where he won twice, at Martinsville and Las Vegas, in 22 starts. In 2022 he moved to a full time schedule with JR Motor Sports and won three times, including a win at New Hampshire.
This year two of Berry’s four Top 10 finishes have come at short tracks. In addition to his 10th place finish at the first Cook Out 400 of the year, held in March at Martinsville, he finished fourth last week at Iowa. His Richmond history is also strong. He has finished in the Top 10 in two of his four Cup Series starts at Richmond, along with an 11th place finish. In the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series he has three Top 10 finishes in four starts.
At Win The Race, we have Berry finishing inside the Top 10 in 41.26% of our simulations. That translates to a fair market price of +142. This means we are well clear of the 34.48% implied probability of the +190 being offered for Berry to finish Top 10. The 6.87% gap between our simulation results and the implied probability of +190 is the single biggest edge the simulation has identified in the Top 10 market this weekend. I want to maintain a big edge here, so I would be comfortable betting on Berry to finish Top 10 down to +160.
