Despite the recurrent woes in Richard Childress‘ NASCAR Cup team, the same does not play out for his stellar Xfinity team. Childress’ foremost star in the racing series’ second tier is Austin Hill, raking up two wins and four top-fives already this season. His younger teammate, Jesse Love, is also on a fiery streak. The 19-year-old made history by winning the Talladega race this year.

He emerged unscathed from the crash-riddled Talladega race. However, in the Sonoma Xfinity race, Love could not escape from a smoking wreck. Yet NASCAR fans ran out of sympathy for him, claiming favoritism is rampant for Childress’ favorite young stud.

Richard Childress has high hopes for Love

Jesse Love is a motorsport prodigy as he made some jaws drop last year. He dominated the ARCA Menards Series, winning half of the races. Being a two-time ARCA Menards West champion, Love’s racing roots run deep. He hopped into a stock car only at ten years old. Love also accumulated six United States Automobile Club (USAC) Championships in the USAC Speed 2 Ford Focus division.

Hence Richard Childress readily inducted him into his Xfinity fold at the end of last year. He proudly claimed, “We’ve been watching Jesse for a while now and his breakout performance in the ARCA Menards Series was impressive this season. We know that he has the talent and determination to win races and compete for championships within RCR’s NASCAR Xfinity Series program.”

The top-performing 19-year-old driver entered the Sonoma weekend strongly. He finished P5 during the practice session for the Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 250 Xfinity race. Then at qualifying, Love secured the sixth spot, trailing behind his teammate Austin Hill who snagged the third place.

But trouble unfolded at the final race. On the lap 50 restart to begin the final stage, a chain-reaction wreck broke out among race contenders. The crash caught Jesse Love, Gibbs, Jeb Burton and Chandler Smith turned Smith and Josh Williams sideways atop the hill in Turn. Multiple drivers piled into the melee as smoke, dust, and debris blocked their progress. But soon after this massive wreck, Jesse Love again got into a fix, and NASCAR called a caution.

Following the colossal pile-up on lap 50, Love lost his momentum and thus faltered on lap 65. Bob Pockrass updated the situation on X: “Caution for Love. 14 to go.” But race fans are unconvinced about the legitimacy of this yellow flag. Some of them smelled favoritism doing the rounds, as the called out NASCAR for favoring Richard Childress’ star.

NASCAR community cries foul

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Richard Childress has got under the race community’s radar multiple times this year. Kyle Busch’s brush-up with Ricky Stenhouse Jr at the All-Star Race was the most significant. Fans sided with Stenhouse even after he punched Busch, as the latter had wrecked him mid-race. Then Xfinity star Austin Hill got into multiple conflicts, the most recent one being with Cole Custer in Charlotte.

For all these incidents, Childress unequivocally sided with his drivers. Hence the racing community suspected foul play when NASCAR called a caution just for the Richard Childress Racing driver, Jesse Love. One fan called out the sanctioning body’s popularity goals: “That makes no sense to throw a yellow. Nascar manufacturing some late race excitement. Smh.” Another fan directly accused NASCAR for its meaningless tactics: “Nascar is a joke.”

Other fans ridiculed waving the yellow flag for nothing. Compared to the previous multi-car wreck, Love’s ordeal seemed puny. One fan vehemently questioned: “How is this a caution?!?” Somebody else was surprised that a road course could ever witness cautions: “never a caution at a road course 😭😭😭😭.” Then another hilariously poked fun at Pockrass’ tweet, toning down its importance. “This should be your tweet every Valentine’s Day.”

Evidently, the NASCAR community is not so happy with Richard Childress’ young stud getting an extra cookie from the officials for a minor cause.