NASCAR is a sport in which drivers are increasingly on the older side whilst maintaining their competitive nature, with many winning races well into their fifties. Legends such as Hershel McGriff were even seen competing at the record-breaking age of 90! Whilst such icons made their racing debuts well into their middle age, there is an increasing number of younger rookies joining the grid now.

Jesse Love proved a talent as young as he can not only enter the world of NASCAR but also rise up the ranks fairly quickly. After a dominant performance in the ARCA Menards Series West, the eighteen-year-old also won the Rookie of the Year! With his rapid progression in the ARCA series, things take another fateful turn for Love’s budding NASCAR career after a move to Richard Childress Racing for the Xfinity Series in 2024 was confirmed earlier.

Jesse Love wasn’t always the confident young man he is today

Taking some time to reflect on the amazing year he’s had in 2023, Jesse Love spoke with Eric Estepp on the Power Hour podcast. The rookie shared that the start of his season was nothing like its climax, with Love fairly underconfident in his ability to win races frequently. And when they got to Daytona, a pirouette halfway into the race cost them heavily, only finding out much later that the source of the issue was a broken valve spring or something similar.

Putting aside his woeful start to the season, Jesse Love shifted his focus to the next race at the Phoenix Raceway, where ill fortune struck once again. The 18-year-old was having a strong outing at the General Tire 150, but his confidence-building result was derailed when Connor Jones sent Jack Wood into the rookie, immediately ending his race whilst he was in the lead. Love shared with Eric Estepp, “That was kind of like the turning point where I just got home from that race and thought I probably won’t make it as a racecar driver.”

Love chose to let go of his awful start to his dream season and rather started concentrating on impressing team bosses for the coming year – a tactic which clearly worked in his favour.  Case in point: The RCR announcement after he left Venturini Motorsports. He added, “I didn’t really think I was that bad. I just thought I couldn’t win races and obviously you need to win races to have a shot at having the funding to have sponsorship and get team owners wanting you to drive their race car. So you just got to win. So I just thought there was something about what I was doing that I couldn’t win and I tried everything.”

The rookie of the season in ARCA was also critical of his shortcomings when things weren’t going his way. But when they did, no one could stop talking about Jesse Love’s heroics, whether it was winning against Ty Majeski in Super Late Model races or Buddy Kofoid, the 2021 and 2022 USAC National Midget Series champion, in his own class. But Love hadn’t been able to consistently keep up these efforts, a thorn by his side that really pricked him. So when he got to Talladega, a flip was switched within his psyche.

Love shared, “My mindset was just like, from now on, for the rest of the year, we’ll see if it works and if it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Wasn’t gonna give up probably but I needed to do something different. My thought process was that I could just have my best day every day and like every single time I get to the racetrack to have like that peak performance and like that number one performance on the race track that maybe I could duplicate those performances.”

READ MORE: Jesse Love Talks About How the Tough Love From His Mentor Helped His Succeed at Venturini Motorsports

Whilst the first two races had been nothing short of misfortune for the young gun, his win at Talladega started a butterfly effect that would blossom into a season where he won ten of the 20 races!

How the win at Talladega set the tone for a dominant season for Love

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Once the ball started rolling and Love bagged his first win of the season, things were smooth sailing from there on out as Love thought to himself, “You know, I obviously won Talladega and the first one of the year is always the hardest one to get. And then after that it just kind of snowballed into every single race weekend that I went into, I just thought about doing the best job that Jesse Love could do, and that turned into winning a national midget race and turned into winning super late races and obviously ARCA races and running good in the truck.”

Through his number-crunching season of countless wins, Love never lost sight of what he truly wanted. It wasn’t the feeling of victory that eluded him in Daytona and Phoenix, but something much more personal. Love concluded, “I’d always put the number in Victory Lane when people would remind me but that wasn’t really the focus, the focus was not winning anymore, I didn’t really care about winning as much as I cared about the performance that I put on at the racetrack and if I was proud of that or not when I left.”

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With the fire of a rookie and the skills of a veteran, Jesse Love has already proven himself countless times, either through winning championships or by beating champions in their categories. With the 2024 Richard Childress Racing announcement, keep an eye out for the eighteen-year-old’s next win!