Love Fights Back From Atlanta Incident For Sixth Place

Jesse Love (2) leads a line of cars Friday night at EchoPark Speedway. (Peter Casey/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

HAMPTON, Ga. – Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love rallied from damage in an early crash to lead laps and challenge for the win in Friday night’s Focused Health 250 at EchoPark Speedway.

The three-time pole winner at what was formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway qualified fifth, but worked his way forward early and had drafting help from teammate Austin Hill before Hill dropped pitside and lost multiple laps with a fuel pickup issue.

That left Love flying solo near the front, but the 20-year-old from Menlo Park, Calif., was able to drive himself toward the front seemingly at will before a lightning delay – and subsequent lap-41 restart – nearly derailed his entire race.

Love attempted to squeeze three-wide to the outside of Sam Mayer going down the backstretch, but had to check up, and when he did he was hit in the rear bumper by eventual race winner Nick Sanchez.

The contact turned Love across traffic with most of the field coming at him, leading to a 10-car pileup that damaged the front fascia and both sides of Love’s No. 2 Roland DGA Chevrolet.

Despite that, however, Love’s crew – led by crew chief Danny Stockman – made positive repairs which allowed Love to remain competitive and eventually work his way back into the lead fray.

Gutting his way forward on the low lane of the 1.54-mile quad-oval, Love eventually worked his way into a side-by-side war with Sanchez, nosing in front with 18 to go and leading three laps in total on the night.

Love had a shot on the race’s final restart with seven laps left, as he used a huge push from Carson Kvapil to surge to the point on lap 157, but was then hung out to dry by the lead draft and could never recover.

He ultimately finished sixth for his 11th top-10 finish of the year, tied for the most in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

It was a positive on paper, but Love knew afterward that it was more rough-and-tumble than he normally is on the racetrack.

“Man, I made no friends tonight,” Love admitted. “We caused two crashes, so I didn’t really expect to have much help there at the end. I kind of put myself in that box, I don’t know. I thought it would be better to shuck him [Sanchez] out of line … because I knew I was getting shucked regardless, but he had a big run.

I thought I did a decent job of keeping him backed up to me, and then I chose to get shucked to the top because I thought that there’d be more help up there, but when I looked in my mirror and everybody was on the bottom I knew that we were in trouble.”

Still, Love found some positivity in the fact his Chevrolet still had potentially race-winning speed despite how banged up it was from the earlier crash.

“I could tell at the end there, the [No.] 1 car [Kvapil] was able to push me so hard that I knew we had to be a bit slow [cutting through the air], because normally you get pushed here and you kind of disconnect … but Kvapil was able to push me so hard that I knew I had to be punching a big hole in the air,” he explained.

The second I got to the lead, I looked in my mirror and [Sanchez] was coming way faster than I could set up to block him with a bubble [of air],” Love added. “I thought the top [lane] might give me a fighting chance, but I got passed by six cars and was just toast from there. Just a shame.”

Love maintains fourth in the Xfinity Series’ regular season standings, seven points back of RCR teammate Austin Hill for third and 83 behind defending champion and current leader Justin Allgaier.

He and the rest of the Xfinity Series field head next to the Chicago (Ill.) Street Course for the Loop 110.

Broadcast coverage from the Windy City is slated for Saturday, July 5 at 4:30 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.