TRIBUTE |
||||||
Keith Berry 1972 – 2025
|
||||||
By Nate Van Wagnen |
||||||
Drag racing lost one of its brightest, boldest personalities on Monday, November 3, when Keith Berry passed away at age 53. The Gainesville, Georgia, native was loud and colorful, but beneath the smack talk and WOOOO!-filled antics was a razor-sharp businessman, devoted family man, and a racer who willed himself into legend through relentless determination and contagious passion. Long before he became one of the most recognizable names in small-tire drag racing, Berry was running Berry Plumbing & Equipment, the family business his father, Archie, built from nothing.“ I’ m the Steve Petty of chicken feet,” Berry once joked, proud of how his father’ s work ethic and determination shaped his own approach to life.
That drive translated seamlessly to racing. He didn’ t grow up at the dragstrip – he’ d never even been to one before 2008.“ Prior to May of 2008, I probably couldn’ t have even told you who John Force was,” he once admitted. But when the TV show Pinks All Out came to Atlanta Dragway, just 30 miles from home, Berry’ s life took a hard right turn.
“ I had to Google where the track was,” he laughed. His wife had told him she’ d leave him if he ever bought a Corvette, so the next day he flew to Texas and bought one – and a Porsche. That black C5 Corvette became the first iteration of what would eventually evolve into one of the most feared radial tire cars on the planet.
At first, Berry was simply having fun.“ I had
|
to ask my brother how the tree worked,” he said of his first-ever pass.“ I sucked at it, but it was great.” But once he got a taste of competition, he went all in. With the help of Pro Line Racing, Bell Chassisworks, and his crew chief Ryan Rakestraw, Berry transformed that street-driven Corvette into a twin-turbo monster that would dominate NMCA’ s Radial Wars class. |
He captured back-to-back NMCA Radial Wars championships in 2014 and 2015, solidifying his reputation as both a champion and a showman.“ That’ s the way it should happen,” he said of his second title, which came down to a winner-takeall semifinal.“ The top two in points racing side by side with everything on the line.”
The team name,“ WOOOO! Nation,” came from a running joke inspired by Eastbound & Down and Ric Flair’ s signature shout. What started as a silly inside joke turned into a full-blown brand.“ WOOOO! Nation, what that meant to a lot of people, is that there’ s a party going on,” Berry said.“ But as more people got to know me and the brand, we started using it to help people who had misfortunes. I want people to look back and say,‘ Man, they made a difference.’”
If there was ever a story that summed up Keith Berry, it was his miraculous win at Lights Out 7. With just days before the event, Berry and his team were still assembling their car.“ At three o’ clock Monday afternoon, we started putting the car back together,” Berry recalled. By Thursday morning, running on fumes and faith, they fired the car up for the first time and headed straight to South Georgia Motorsports Park.
In true Berry fashion, chaos turned into com-
|
PHOTOGRAPHS BY IAN TOCHER AND THE DI ARCHIVES |