There are two things Jesse Love hasn’t experienced much of since winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship in November at Phoenix Raceway.
Winter The Off-season
“I’ve only experienced like 15 days of cold weather in North Carolina the past couple of months,” Love told Motorsport.com this week at the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals. “We went to Australia and now the Chili Bowl and some family vacation. Pretty busy.”
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Within a couple of weeks of winning the championship, Love went to Australia to race a Super2 car alongside the Repco Supercars Championship in Adelaide. It’s literally summer on the other side of the world in November.
There was some beach time near the equator and now a week in Tulsa spent largely indoors so Love has successfully evaded winter and the off-season over the past two months. There was much to celebrate too.
“It has been very cool,” Love said. “And really, my crew guys are all pretty young and (crew chief Danny) Stockman is wound up pretty tight so that celebration was up to par — a pretty good time.
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“It was neat to stay in Arizona after the season, and not to have to travel, and keep the celebration going while we were still in the moment. But since we left, I just haven’t had time to reflect much at all because I have been so busy.”
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He says he has started to consider the possibility of extra pressure this season but added that it doesn’t change his work ethic. He wants to win on road courses this year and continue developing as a fuller body of work behind the wheel.
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“I still think Connor (Zilisch) and Shane (Van Gisbergen) are going to be running in our road course races and that’s the measuring stick,” he said. “It’s good to have them to see how far I’ve come.”
Love especially enjoyed racing the Super2 car because he says he is a longtime fan of Supercars and the second-tier division is basically the previous generation of car used by the highest level.
“I enjoyed it from the history factor,” he said. “I don’t get wrapped up in stuff like that a lot but I did think some about how these are the cars Shane drove that made him so good. I think I learned several techniques that weekend. It was challenging but I think it’s made me a better road racer for the Xfinity season.”
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But before he returns to what is now the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, Love has returned to the Chili Bowl after a one-year hiatus but is doing it in a car owned by Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 crew chief Blake Harris.
For his part, Harris is from a family of long-time dirt racers, and this car was purchased from Alex Bowman and built in part at Hendrick Motorsports. This collaboration happened because Love and Bowman are both part of the Josh Wise Hendrick fitness program. Bowman told Love that Harris needed a driver and made the connection.
He has only raced in this building once over the past three years but says everything came back to him pretty quickly on Sunday in practice.
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“I was caught off guard at first but I didn’t expect to be this comfortable this quickly, and I don’t know if it’s their set-up or what, but I am really comfortable inside the car,” Love said. “That’s a positive.
“And I know that Alex’s cars, they have this look to them when they roll around at speed, and I expected them to feel different than a Keith Kunz or Chad Boat car, but I was just extra surprised and didn’t think we needed to make that many adjustments.
“We just need to keep up with the racetrack however that evolves.”
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Love swapped from Wednesday to Friday because he just felt that was an easier path to qualify into the feature.
“So if Friday goes well, I don’t see why we can’t have a good run on Saturday and be in the show,” Love said. “That’s where my mind is at right now. We need to see how Friday goes but I just didn’t want to make my life harder than it needed to be on Wednesday after being out of a Midget for so long. …
“My expectation is to drive this car really hard and make good decisions. If I do that, I think we can make the show. But I’m also very aware that I’m racing against guys who come here every year and have raced USAC all season so it would be kind of weird to tell you that I expect to run top-five in the feature on Saturday.
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“It could happen and that’s the goal but it just comes down to if we execute and get a good draw, all the small things that need to go right here.”
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