AM Racing, which officially announced that it had mutually parted ways with its full-time driver Hailie Deegan on Monday morning, will once again feature a NASCAR Cup Series driver behind the wheel of its No. 15 Ford Mustang for this weekend’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Explore the Pocono Mountains 225 at Pocono Raceway. Josh Berry, who drives the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, will pilot the car this weekend.
The No. 15 AM Racing entry will be sponsored by Viva Tequila Seltzer at the 2.5-mile triangular track.
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Berry, the current NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year Standings leader, is a five-time NASCAR Xfinity Series race winner, and the 33-year-old made a Championship 4 appearance in the series in 2022. Berry will look to snag the second-consecutive top-10 finish for AM Racing this weekend at the 2.5-mile triangular track in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.
“I’m really looking forward to being back in the Xfinity Series,” said Berry in a team press release. “I can’t thank everyone at AM Racing and Viva Tequila Seltzer enough for the opportunity. Pocono is a fun track, and I believe we can go out and have a solid result.”
With Joey Logano behind the wheel this past weekend in The Loop 110 at the Chicago Street Course, the AM Racing team picked up its first top-10 finish of the season in an eighth-place finish.
“We are proud of the hard work of our AM Racing team at the Chicago Street Course last weekend,” said AM Racing team president Wade Moore. “We hope to have the opportunity to work with Joey (Logano) again in the future. We are excited about the opportunity to work with another Ford Performance Cup driver, Josh (Berry), at Pocono Raceway on Saturday afternoon.”
Before this past weekend’s event, the best finish for the team this year was a 12th-place finish with Hailie Deegan behind the wheel at Talladega Superspeedway. The team also had a 15th-place run at Las Vegas Motor Speedway earlier this year, but aside from that it had been a very rough season for the No. 15 group.
With Deegan behind the wheel, the team suffered DNFs for crashes at Daytona International Speedway, Phoenix Raceway, and Darlington Raceway, and overall the organization had recorded eight 30th-place-or-worse finishes through the season’s opening 17 races.
The rough performance through the opening 12 races of the season forced the team to make a change at the crew chief position as they replaced Joe Williams with Matt Lucas. Five races later, the team made a change in driver, after deciding to mutually part ways with Deegan.
AM Racing vaulted from 34th in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Owner Standings heading into Chicago to 32nd leaving the 2.14-mile street course.
Now, the team looks to continue to build a notebook about its program with NASCAR Cup Series talent behind the wheel, but will need to find a driver or drivers, who are ineligible for NASCAR Cup Series points, to fill out the seven-race NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoff schedule as NASCAR Cup Series drivers are not permitted to run Playoff events in the NASCAR Xfinity Series or NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
