Jesse Love secured five pole positions during his NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie campaign last year, but through the opening 21 races of the 2025 season, it looked like he was going to be hard-pressed to match that total in his Sophomore season.
Then came Iowa Speedway. Love stormed to his third pole position of the season with a lap time of 23.642 seconds (133.237 mph), which allowed him to take the top qualifying spot by 0.030 seconds over 2025 rookie contender William Sawalich.
NASCAR Xfinity Series Iowa Results: HyVee Perks 250 Practice | Official Starting Lineup
Carson Hocevar, who is driving the No. 11 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet following the team’s release of Josh Williams earlier this week, recorded a third-place qualifying effort, while Connor Zilisch will chase four consecutive Xfinity race wins from the fourth position, and Sam Mayer will seek his first win of the season from the fifth starting spot.
Love, who comes into this weekend’s race fourth in the NASCAR Xfinity Series regular-season championship standings, says that he and his No. 2 Richard Childress Racing team came into the HyVee 250 race weekend with a need for speed. They found it.
“Ah, super fun. Me and [Crew Chief] Danny [Stockman Jr.], and our engineer [Eric] Duncan had a pretty big heart-to-heart this week that we need more speed, and I got to run a bigger arch. Well, there’s a big arch, and a lot of speed for them,” Love said in an interview on The CW after securing the pole position. Man, this thing was as fast as Xfinity Mobile. I’m just proud of Whelen, Chevrolet, ECR, everybody back at Welcome, North Carolina, taking a tough week last week and putting it behind us and showing up this week. Seems like Austin [Dillon] has some good speed, too. So, I’m definitely pumped up, I pride myself on qualifying a lot.”
While his lap was worthy of his eighth career pole in 55 attempts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Love had to adjust on the fly from his initial plan of running the shortest line around the 0.875-mile Iowa Speedway during his qualifying run.
“I told you I was going to probably plan to run the bottom, and then I entered the corner with way too much speed, and kind of had to change my game plan up,” Love admitted. “[I] and [driver coach] Scott Speed talk about just kind of having a fluid state of mind all the time. I feel like put together a good lap even after I missed my mark.”
Austin Dillon secured the sixth starting spot as he’ll drive the No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet in Saturday’s race in place of Austin Hill, who was suspended by NASCAR for his actions at Indianapolis Motor Speedway a weekend ago.
Ryan Sieg, who was the fastest driver in practice earlier in the day, will start Saturday’s race from the seventh position. Sieg is attempting to secure a berth in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoff field. Sieg enters this weekend 20 points below Jeb Burton, the final driver inside of the Playoff cut line.
Jeb Burton, who is 10 points ahead of his cousin Harrison Burton in the championship standings, had an abysmal qualifying run and will start from the 32nd position. Harrison Burton, who was second-fastest in Saturday’s practice session, will start 17th.
Carson Kvapil will start eighth, and he was joined by Sammy Smith, who contacted the outside wall with the right rear quarterpanel during his qualifying run, and Daniel Dye inside of the top-10 of the starting lineup for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series HyVee Perks 250 at Iowa Speedway.
