Blown Tire Cuts Jesse Love’s Day Short At Iowa

Jesse Love (HHP/Chris Owens photo)

NEWTON, Iowa – After battling among the top 10 for much of the first two stages Saturday at Iowa Speedway, Jesse Love’s race came to an end courtesy of a heavy crash in turns three and four.

Love, the standout 19-year-old NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie from Menlo Park, Calif., started ninth in the Hy-Vee Perks 250 after qualifying was rained out and the field was set by the performance metric system – which factors in the previous week’s performance with driver and owner point rankings.

He used that starting position to maintain among the leaders for the opening 75-lap stage, ranking 10th at the first stage break to add one bonus point to his regular-season total as a result.

Two restarts with positive lane choices got Love up into the top five midway through stage two, but he began reporting a possible tire issue around lap 130, fading back to the fringes of the top 10 as a result.

Though Love continued to battle for seventh in an exchange with his Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Hill, as well as Riley Herbst and Justin Allgaier, Love eventually cut a right-front tire on the final lap of the second stage and slammed the turn-four SAFER Barrier.

The impact caused terminal damage to Love’s No. 2 Whelen Engineering Chevrolet Camaro, leading to a season-worst 31st-place finish and the first DNF of Love’s young Xfinity Series career.

Despite the disappointment of the premature ending, Love still tried to muster a smile after being checked and released from the infield care center.

“I told myself when I first started racing at this level that I had to be tough enough to take some bigger hits,” Love said of the crash. “It was a pretty big one … but I’ve wrecked in midgets and sprint cars plenty of times and they kind of prepare you for days like this.

“I knew that [the tires] were chunked, but we’d been chunking them all day and it had been fine,” Love added. “I tried to fill the hole on a restart with the 00 [Custer] and get close to the lead, but I think that might have been where we picked up a tiny puncture. We just started getting really tight at that point … and I thought maybe it was because of a tire going down, but once it got really bad it just blew on me.

“I had an inkling that it was coming, but at the same time, we didn’t want to come down pit road and end up giving our race away because we didn’t have an issue. Just a fast car and a tough result.”

Even with his crash Saturday, Love remains fifth in the regular-season point standings, though he’s faded into a tie with Sheldon Creed and now sits 105 markers off of leader and defending series champion Cole Custer.

“It’s not a question of pace. We’re in the hunt every week,” Love noted. “We just need to keep plugging away with the speed that we do have and start putting together results on paper again like this team deserves.”

Love and the rest of the Xfinity Series field will return to action Saturday, June 22 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the SciAps 200.

Broadcast coverage at the flat, 1.058-mile oval is slated for 3:30 p.m. ET, live on USA, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.