Jesse Love is used to not only competing for, but winning, championships.
The Menlo Park, California-native is a back-to-back champion in the ARCA Menards Series West (2020, 2021) and a former champion of the ARCA Menards Series (2023). But, once you reach NASCAR’s National Series, the title battles get much more intense, thanks to NASCAR’s winner-takes-all championship race.
Saturday at Phoenix Raceway, Love will have his first opportunity to experience that increased level of intensity, as he faces off against Justin Allgaier, Connor Zilisch, and Carson Kvapil for the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship.
During the 10-plus-year tenure of this format in NASCAR’s National Series, different drivers have elected to handle the pressure in different ways — with some choosing to treat the season-finale as just another race. Jesse Love? Not one of those people.
“You can go about it two ways: You can treat it like it’s any other race, or you can put some more effort into it,” Love said during Championship 4 Media Day on Thursday. “I don’t think it’s any other race; there’s more on the line. I think, from my point of view, it’s almost a little naive to call it any other race.”
In fact, after the checkered flag was displayed at Talladega Superspeedway, the middle race in the semi-final round of the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs, Love, with a sizeable advantage to the cutline heading into an elimination race at Martinsville Speedway, called an audible.
“I kind of hedged my bet after Talladega, and probably worked on Martinsville [the elimination race in the Round of 8] for 30 minutes throughout the week, and just started focusing on Phoenix,” said Love. “Honestly, I used Martinsville more for what’s going to help me at Phoenix. Obviously, we pushed some things, and yeah, it wasn’t a great result, but I was able to focus on Phoenix, and yeah.”
As far as preparing for the event, Love says not much changes from a normal race weekend in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, in regard to the content of the preparation itself.
“The prep itself hasn’t changed a whole lot, I still put a lot of effort into it every day, like, I’m kind of working like a six-to-five job, and after that I can kind of relax and calm down, but yeah, defintiely, I’ve put more effort into this racetrack as a whole throughout my career, which is kind of a blessing. Now, I have more knowledge going into the week.”
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For a 20-year-old, no matter their profession or the situation that they are in, to be under this high level of pressure, at such a young age, can be very mentally taxing. However, Love says that, between speaking with Josh Wise and some things that went on Tuesday, the Richard Childress Racing driver has been as calm as ever.
“For me, I thought I was going to have to do a lot more work — I have a great mentor in life with Josh Wise on the mental side of things — I kind of thought after Sunday-Monday I was going to need to rely on him pretty heavily, but Tuesday, a couple of things played out throughout my day, and kind of brought a lot of awareness to me, and then now, this week, I’ve been as calm as I ever have been.”
The NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway, where Love will look to secure his fourth championship in the last six seasons, will take place on Saturday, November 1 at 7:30 PM ET on The CW, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
