Jesse Love Captures XFINITY Season Opener Win at Daytona

Jesse Love conquered the competition with his win in Saturday’s United Rentals 300 at Daytona. (Photo: Donald Jenney | The Podium Finish)

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A year ago, Jesse Love won the pole and looked like a surefire shot to win the United Rentals 300. After winning Stage 1, Love was collected in a 11-car backstretch accident that relegated him to a 20th place result.

Perhaps a full season of NASCAR XFINITY Series competition with wisdom, experience and patience paid dividends in Saturday’s season opener at Daytona International Speedway. Starting ninth, the 20-year-old Menlo Park, California, native bided his time in an eventful but competitive race on Saturday evening.

While Love hovered inside the top 10 throughout the race, finishing ninth in Stage 1, Austin Hill, his Richard Childress Racing teammate, pulled a Talking Heads. It was the same as it ever was with Hill dominating the first two stanzas, sweeping the stages looking like the driver to beat.

Trouble found early race contenders like Brandon Jones, Carson Kvapil, Harrison Burton, Daniel Dye, Brennan Poole and Connor Zilisch on the backstretch. With Jones and Dye wrapping their kickoff efforts in inglorious fashion, Kvapil, Brton, Poole and Zilisch soldiered onward.

Nearly halfway into the race, rookie Nick Sanchez and Sheldon Creed tangled on the frontstretch, essentially concluding Stage 2. Just as Hill evidently had the race in the bag, rear end issues curtailed his four-peat efforts, taking his dominant machine behind the wall to finish 33rd.

From there, it was a wide open affair with the likes of Creed, Ryan Sieg, Caesar Bacarella and Love duking it out for the lead. As the race wound down, so did the number of quality competitors in Justin Bonsignore, Sammy Smith, Justin Allgaier, Parker Retzlaff, Christian Eckes, Ryan Ellis and Greg Van Alst.

Even with the final restart coming in a NASCAR Overtime session, Love was not tentative, determined to capture the checkered flag for Childress’ team. Coming to the stripe, a final lap frontstretch accident collecting Allgaier, Ryan Sieg, Anthony Alfredo, Josh Bilicki, Jeb Burton and Josh Williams secured the victory for Love.

Overcoming the disappointment of last year’s opener, Love was jubilant in front of the Daytona faithful while acknowledging a deity for his win.

Jesse Love (No. 2) raced with confidence and swagger to win Saturday’s United Rentals 300 at Daytona. (Photo: Donald Jenney | The Podium Finish)

“I just listened to the guy up there. I am so out of breath. Oh, my gosh, I’m out of breath,” Love said. “Just want to thank the good Lord above for putting me in this position. So many people have helped me get to this point, Billy Venturini, Shane Rush, the people that taught me how to race here at Daytona, thank you guys.

“Our ECR Hertz and Childress Racing everybody back at Welcome. Bummer what happened to 21. I’m not sure what happened but he was really dominant tonight, and we’re working on changing our culture here at RCR. We’re winners. We know we are. We all want to win a championship for Richard Childress. Man, that thing was as fast as Xfinity mobile and I’m ready to go get to Atlanta now. It was awesome.”

Sam Mayer, making his first start with the reorganized No. 41 Haas Factory Ford Mustang Dark Horse entry, tallied a solid runner-up. Compared to prior experiences at “The World Center of Racing,” Mayer was glad to have a strong result instead of having a torn up car.

“First top five finish [at Daytona], yikes,” Mayer said. “Yeah, we kind of just did everything that we wanted to. The car was capable of it, and Tyler Green up on the roof, he’s new to me, so we worked really well together today. So I’m super pumped to see what we can do the rest of the year.

“Obviously going into Atlanta next week, it’s another fun one for us, so we’ll get to see how it goes, but there’s just a lot of positivity going on right now.”

Creed’s bid to capture his elusive first NASCAR XFINITY Series victory progresses to Atlanta. Like Mayer, Creed could not feel too disappointed considering it was his first start for the Haas Factory brigade.

“Getting control of the race, obviously. I mean, I tried,” Creed lamented. “I tried to go by the 2 there with 15, 20 to go and got by him once and then got next to him another time and just didn’t quite have the help out back that I needed. But the RCR car was just really fast and he could rebound really quickly like as I’d go by him, he could rebound and go right back by me where it took me a couple laps to kind of think it out.

“Overall, I know we talked before, I would just go try to be aggressive and keep myself up front, and I thought we did all that well. So just appreciative of everyone at Haas Factory team and Friends of Jaclyn. A really fast Ford Mustang Dark Horse tonight.”

Jesse Love (No. 2) duked it out against Sheldon Creed (No. 00) for the United Rentals 300 win at Daytona. (Photo: Donald Jenney | The Podium Finish)

Beyond a fast machine and well prepared ride by crew chief Danny Stockman, Love praised a former racer for the mental and physical training put forth to succeed at Daytona.

“Josh Wise changed my life the other week helping me compartmentalize my mind, and it’s easy to because the green-white-checkereds suck,” Love observed. “I take a lot of what Josh Wise says to heart and I kind of tapped into the mindset of no fear, no emotion, and no, I guess, anxiety. Just straight will to succeed and will to win.

“And thank you to everybody at Wise Optimization, Scott Speed and Josh, Stratton. Excited to go celebrate with my guys. My pit crew did a phenomenal job today, and this Chevy was really good. We finally got a win for the Whelen car. That makes it even more special.”

Stage 1 Top 10 Results

1. Austin Hill
2. Sheldon Creed
3. Nick Sanchez (R)
4. Jeb Burton
5. Anthony Alfredo
6. Ryan Ellis
7. Justin Allgaier
8. Dean Thompson (R)
9. Jesse Love
10. Taylor Gray (R)

Stage 2 Top 10 Results

1. Austin Hill
2. Ryan Sieg
3. Sheldon Creed
4. Justin Allgaier
5. Dean Thompson (R)
6. Jeb Burton
7. Taylor Gray (R)
8. William Sawalich (R)
9. Anthony Alfredo
10. Harrison Burton

United Rentals 300 at Daytona International Speedway Race Results