Like Dale Earnhardt Jr., a lot of NASCAR Cup Series fans knew that it was only a matter of time before Josh Berry found his way to victory lane in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.
But not many would have predicted that it would happen just five races into the 2025 season, or that he would be only the season's third different winner.
Or that he would do it in a "regular" race on a 1.5-mile oval.
Berry secured his first career win, and the 101st for the Wood Brothers, in Sunday afternoon's Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But his trip to victory lane was far from the only "upset" element of the 267-lap race around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Las Vegas, Nevada oval.
Berry held off Trackhouse Racing's Daniel Suarez, and behind them was RFK Racing's Ryan Preece in third place.
You'd have to look really, really hard to find a more unexpected top three in a non-superspeedway/non-road course race, even in the Next Gen era.
Between those three drivers, Suarez, with two wins in nine seasons, was the only former race winner, and the only driver with any playoff experience. He is also ironically a driver whom many believe is going to be losing his ride after the 2025 season ends, with Connor Zilisch primed to take over behind the wheel of the No. 99 Chevrolet.
But perhaps even more telling of the situation was Preece's third place finish, matching his career high from six years ago in a superspeedway race at Talladega when he was still with the team formerly known as JTG Daugherty Racing.
If there was ever a way to properly illustrate Stewart-Haas Racing's downfall, Sunday's race was it.
In a "regular" oval race, two of last year's Stewart-Haas Racing drivers finished in the top three, with another former Stewart-Haas Racing driver in second place.
Last year, with Preece in his second season with Stewart-Haas Racing and Berry in his first, Preece finished 26th in points, with Berry behind him in 27th.
Stewart-Haas Racing went from the top of the Cup Series to being an also-ran in a matter of only a few years, and their shutdown after the 2024 season was not even much of a surprise, given that rapid decline.
In 2018, they led the series with 12 wins, and they also led the series in 2020 with 10. Even with only four wins in 2019, they still made it to the Championship 4 with Kevin Harvick for the third year in a row and fifth time in six years.
But in 2021 and 2022, they added just four more victories, and in 2023, they went winless for the first time since becoming Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009.
Then last year, they would have missed the playoffs entirely with all four drivers, had Chase Briscoe not held off Kyle Busch at Darlington Raceway in the regular season finale. Even still, Briscoe's 14th place finish in the standings was the worst team-leading finish for a Stewart-Haas Racing driver in team history, just one year after Harvick's 13th became the worst.
The team's top five finish total of seven and their top 10 finish total of 25 were also their worst, and their DNF total of 26 matched their highest.
But the performance by Berry and Preece, and even Suarez, who spent just one year with the team in 2019, demonstrate that the drivers weren't the problem as Stewart-Haas Racing's twilight years became a reality.
The once-proud team fell from grace, and they fell hard.
Now Berry, one of the oldest second-year Cup drivers in recent history at the age of 34, and Preece, a driver many felt should not have been given another chance at the Cup level after his past struggles, are having instant success with new organizations – new Ford organizations, nonetheless.