There have been several debutants in the 2024 Xfinity Series season pulling impressive performances, be it Shane van Gisbergen bagging 3 wins or the Trackhouse Racing prodigy Connor Zilisch winning his debut race at Watkins Glen. However, one name that cannot be missed from the list has to be Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love.

After winning the 2023 ARCA Menards Series championship, the 19-year-old got a boost to the Xfinity Series. And the California native continuing the same momentum did not fail to impress as he was recently named the Rookie of the Year against SVG, who’s a three-time supercar champion. However, the youngster did not wish to end his impressive campaign at Martinsville. Post the recent eliminator, the #2 has posted a mysterious message on X.

Jess Love falls short of first Championship 4 appearance

After absolutely dominating the ARCA series with his 10 wins in 2023, the RCR driver was poised to do the same in the Xfinity Series. And he took everyone by storm after bagging the pole in the season opener at Daytona and also in the first points race of the season at Atlanta Motor Speedway. In fact, Jesse Love has won 5 poles so far in the season. Bagging a win in his debut Talladega race, he booked a spot in the playoffs. However, this wasn’t just another case of ‘win it and you are in,’ as Love has shown commendable consistency throughout the season.

In the 32 races so far, he has managed seven top 5s and seventeen top 10 finishes and his average finish has been 12.15. This is impressive because it’s better than Championship four contestant and Xfinity veteran Justin Allgaier whose average finish has been 13.9 this season. However, speaking of Championship 4, Love was -35 points entering the Martinsville race, in a must-win situation. After starting in P4, he finished 4th in stage one, however, dropped to 12th in stage 2 and could not climb back up, finishing the race in the 12th position. Had he won the race, it would have been a historic moment, as not many rookies have had the privilege to compete in Phoenix in their debut seasons. The first rookie to win a national series championship in NASCAR was Chase Elliott, who won the Xfinity series in 2014.

Post the race, the disappointed RCR driver posted a one-line message on X leaving many wondering what it means. He wrote, “Let’s throw dirt on this place.” While it’s unclear what he meant by this, he’s probably referring to how harshly everyone raced at Martinsville, him included. With the stakes so high and emotions bubbling over, everyone could see this coming from a mile away. In stage 2, Love bumped Riley Herbst out of the way and Herbst was quick to return the favor by bumping the #2 to pass him on the next turn. This was not the lone case of aggression. Even Cole Custer and Chandler Smith locked horns in the race trying to make it to the next round.

Post the race, a disappointed Jesse Love opened up on the hard racing at Martinsville. Love, in his post-race interview, said, “It’s typical (expletive). Like what do you expect? We come here and host a Mickey Mouse race to go to the final four so you’re always going to have people upset. Right like short track Racing’s great but it has to have like respect to be great and obviously like not bad-mouthing anybody but it’s just it’s not where we’re at in our sport right now.”

This is what happens at a high-stakes race according to Love, “I don’t think anybody’s intentionally doing it I think everybody is just kind of rising to the level of their competition and once one guy gets aggressive then that guy feels like he has to get aggressive. And I mean that even happened with me in the 98 Today you know maybe I overreacted. I was just returning what was given to me right. So it’s like I don’t know what to think I think just uh you come to a short track and tempers fly,” He added.

Regardless, Love did not look like he was in contention to win in Martinsville at any point in the race. After dropping to 12th in the stage 2, the #2 car could not climb back into the top 10. And post the race, Love thinks they should not have been in a must-win situation in the first place.

Jesse Love on how his debut season has been

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While Love has shown consistency, he was disappointed at how, despite having a good car, they could not close the deal at Martinsville. Love said, “I don’t know. I mean I don’t think that my car was that bad for me to run like that. So it’s not just what’s under the hood it’s probably a mixture of both me and the car today and whatever we had going on just didn’t work for either of us. So you know we’re going to just we just got to be better than that. We were just not good today so simple as that.”

While more than 50% of his 2024 races have been top 10 finishes, there were some 20 and worse finishes too. Owing to those and lacking stage points, Love feels he was short on points entering the playoffs. “I think it’s the 20 races before that. We had a bad summer stretch and we had no points coming into this deal. So um if we could have started 30 points up we’d probably be in good shape. but um the lack of stage points I mean we’ve run fourth and sixth the last two races and lost points to the cut line both of them.”

The 19-year-old has a vast career ahead of him and he’s still on the path to achieve greatness. Showing the kind of maturity that Love has, there’s no doubt an Xfinity championship is soon coming. “So just got to run better in the beginning in the middle half of the year and did next year and see if we can be better.” Love will continue piloting the #2 car in the 2025 season and more consistency throughout the season seems like his game plan.

How do you think Jesse Love did in his debut season so far? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.