UPDATE: Jesse Love (P1) and Justin Bonsignore (P36) have been disqualified from Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Rockingham. Sammy Smith is the winner of the North Carolina Education Lottery 250 at Rockingham Speedway.
For just the third time in his NASCAR Xfinity Series career, Jesse Love has parked his No. 2 Whelen Engineering Chevrolet in Victory Lane, winning Saturday’s North Carolina Education Lottery 250 at Rockingham Speedway.
While the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) driver seemed to be the class of the field throughout Saturday’s 250-lap contest, it still took some late-race finesse from the Menlo Park, California-native to secure the victory.
After a rash of cautions happened towards the end of the race, Love found himself sitting third as the field went into NASCAR Overtime. Heading into the first corner, Love eased into the rear bumper of Sammy Smith, moving the JR Motorsports driver up the racetrack and rocketing off Turn 2 with the race lead.
That move was enough to give the 20-year-old driver a sizable gap, keeping him in front of the hungry pack behind him. At the end of the two-lap run, while everybody was running two and three-wide behind Love extended his lead to 0.691 seconds.
“These fans are amazing. What an incredible racetrack, you probably can’t even hear me, right now,” Love said in response to the screaming fans in the background. “Man, this racetrack is right up my alley, it’s hammer down, and you’ve got to be in the gas good today. I had such an incredible car.”
Similar to Friday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event, fuel mileage came into the picture during the race’s final laps, with several drivers cutting it close on fuel, and on one restart, a stutter by Christian Eckes caused a nine-car wreck.
Ryan Sieg, who led a race-high 77 laps at Rockingham Speedway, saw his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series victory slip away after he ran out of fuel on the pace laps with 11 laps remaining and eventually got caught up in the multi-car wreck, before finishing 19th.
Sammy Smith finished in the runner-up position, after holding the lead for nine of the final 11 laps. The second-place result is a solid rebound for Smith and also wins him a $100,000 bonus courtesy of the Dash4Cash.
With a third-place finish in his No. 4 Scentsy Chevrolet, Parker Retzlaff matched a career-best result, while also collecting the best-ever finish for Alpha Prime Racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Harrison Burton matched the best-ever NASCAR Xfinity Series finish for AM Racing in fourth, while Brennan Poole backed up a top-five run at Martinsville with another at Rockingham, finishing fifth.
Taylor Gray came home in sixth place, while Austin Hill, Josh Williams, Jeb Burton, and Daniel Dye rounded out the top-10.
In his first NASCAR Xfinity Series event since 2017, Kasey Kahne finished a respectable 15th place, despite having a torn-up No. 33 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet from two different wrecks.
Only 26 drivers finished Saturday’s 250-lap contest, which ran for more than three hours and included multiple in-race stoppages for mass cleanup situations.
Leaving Rockingham, Justin Allgaier continues to hold the points lead in the NASCAR Xfinity Series by 79 points over Jesse Love, who jumps into second. Sam Mayer, Austin Hill, and Carson Kvapil round out the top five.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series is set to tackle the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway next weekend for the Ag-Pro 300. Coverage of the event will be on The CW, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 at 4:30 PM on Saturday, April 26.
