Let Jesse Love’s pursuit of a second consecutive NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship officially begin. After 25 frustrating races filled with numerous missed opportunities to land in victory lane, Love pulled through in Saturday night’s Nu Way 225 at World Wide Technology Raceway.
The driver of the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet successfully held off Sheldon Creed, who crossed the finish line behind him by a margin of 0.896 seconds. This marks the fourth victory of Love’s 92-race NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series career.
On a hard-fought night, where he had to battle numerous championship contenders for the lead, including Creed, Carson Kvapil, and Sam Mayer, Love was proud of his entire team for executing when it mattered most on Saturday night.
“Guess we had to put them on the dash,” Love said after climbing from his car. “Just proud of our crew, proud of my pit crew, proud of my whole Whelen Engineering team, Chevrolet, Wise Optimization, everybody who has been so involved in repeating a championship this year.”
How tough had the 2026 campaign been for Love, prior to Saturday night’s victory?
“It’s been really hard, but I knew that if I just keep my grit, if I keep my tenacity, keep my work ethic — not just keep it, but improve it — then eventually, one of these opportunities is going to be there, and I’m going to freaking take it. Which we freaking did tonight,” Love said.
With the win, Love moves up two spots in the Chase Grid to fourth, and he now sits just 16 points away from the championship lead with seven races remaining in the season.
With his runner-up finish, which comes on the heels of a win at Darlington Raceway last week, Creed assumed the series point lead by three points over Justin Allgaier, who had a frustrating night on the path to a 13th-place finish.
The soft-spoken Creed is excited to be atop the championship standings, but knows he has a long way to go if he wants to collect an O’Reilly Auto Parts Series crown.
“Just, yeah, cool to be the point leader, but this thing is far from over,” Creed said. “Just need to keep showing up and doing a good job.”
Sam Mayer, who threatened at the front of the field but never led Saturday night’s race, officially came home with a third-place finish. The run moved the Haas Factory Team driver forward three spots in the championship standings to sixth.
Taylor Gray rebounded from a spin on Lap 14 to finish fourth on a hard-fought night for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.
And Carson Kvapil, who won Stage 1 and led a race-high 105 laps from the pole, ended up with a fifth-place result on another impressive evening. Kvapil sits third in the championship standings, nine points behind Creed.
Parker Retzlaff, Brent Crews, Sammy Smith, Kyle Sieg, and Jeb Burton rounded out the top-10 finishers in the Nu Way 225 at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Rajah Caruth, a Chase contender, finished 11th after rebounding from being involved in a wild 11-car crash on pit road on Lap 48. Brandon Jones, another Chase contender, rebounded from being involved in the same crash to finish 15th.
Austin Hill saw a decent points night fall by the wayside with a rash of tire issues in the closing laps. Hill would finish 29th, one lap off the pace.
And Corey Day crashed hard on Lap 134 after William Sawalich, upset with how he had been raced by Day last week and at this juncture in the race, took a hard swipe at him down the backstretch. That contact sent Day into Justin Allgaier, and sent Day crashing into the inside wall. Day would finish 33rd.
Allgaier, who suffered damage in the crash would finish a disappointing 13th.
