Josh Berry is the face right now of why it’s important to keep the rule in NASCAR that no organization should exceed the four-car maximum. What I mean by that is, no one is allowed to run a team of more than four cars on a full-time basis. It didn’t used to be that way as there were years that Roush would roll out five cars. However, in this era of charters and parity, NASCAR has remained strong in not allowing teams to just bring out as many cars as they’d like.

Berry is proof on why this could have been a potential problem down the road.

In just four starts in Chase Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet, Berry already has a pair of top 10 results including a runner-up in Sunday’s race at the Richmond (VA) Raceway. Eventually, Elliott is going to be back. However, if this rule wasn’t in effect, you have to know that there’s no way Hendrick Motorsports would let Berry become available to anyone else.

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He’s that good. He’s that talented. For a team of the size of HMS, they could afford to roll out a fifth car and let Berry stay. I mean this team has four interim crew chiefs right now and you’d never know it. Any one of those four could have wound up with Berry on say, the No. 25 Chevrolet for the 2024 season.

If that was the case, then that’s now 5 cars other teams would have to deal with. If that’s 5, why not 6? Where would this end? It also wouldn’t just be HMS doing it. Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing could also in theory do so as well.

Think about it, Matt Kenseth a few years ago may not have been pushed aside for Erik Jones. Same for Carl Edwards and Daniel Suarez. All four could have raced together with Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch. Christopher Bell would have joined the fray in addition to and not in replacement of Jones.

The bigger teams would have more cars, more talent, more resources and the numbers to monopolize the sport. So, NASCAR stepped in and forced this not to happen.

As a result, you get some interesting silly season tidbits if a team is maxed out. Similar to this one. HMS is full. William Byron signed a long term contract. So did Alex Bowman, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott. Berry has no where to go with HMS.

While that’s a detriment to someone like Berry, it does open up doors for the talented driver to land elsewhere for 2024. It’s better for talented drivers to be spread across the garage and not under one roof with one organization.