Jesse Love will start from the pole position in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway as the Richard Childress Racing driver led the way in the opening round in what turned out to be a single-round weather-shortened qualifying session.
STARTING LINEUP: Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega
Love topped Austin Hill, his Richard Childress Racing teammate, by 0.188 seconds to capture his seventh-career NASCAR Xfinity Series pole in his 44th career start.
The pole comes a week after Love was disqualified from a win at Rockingham Speedway. The 20-year-old says he was bummed about the disqualification, not because it took a win away from his career record, but because his team felt the infraction was a result of on-track damage.
“My team doesn’t deserve to have that press around them. RCR doesn’t deserve to have that press around them. Neither does my crew chief, Danny Stockman, and a lot of that falls on their shoulders and his shoulders,” Love said.
The driver continued, “So, I’m glad that we were able to prove (in-race damage caused the infraction) in a sense, but I’m bummed that it doesn’t matter. I feel like at the end of the day, and I need to be careful about how I word this, but I feel like I maybe got penalized myself for racing too hard, and I think that’s where I’m a little upset.”
Despite the disappointment, Love would concede that NASCAR has inspection rulings in place for a reason.
Behind the all-RCR front row in the qualifying results was Justin Allgaier, who nabbed the third starting position for Saturday’s race.
Joey Gase turned the qualifying lap of his life, as he secured the fourth starting spot, which was 10 spots better than his previous career-best qualifying effort.
Jeb Burton, who continues to crank out great results each week, will start from the fifth position in the Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega.
Taylor Gray, Josh Williams, Daniel Dye, Ryan Ellis, and Jeremy Clements round out the top-10 starters in Saturday’s field.
Three drivers failed to advance to Saturday’s race from the 41-car entry list. Garrett Smithley, Austin Green, and Jake Garcia will all go home early this weekend.
