By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – One teammate’s misfortune was another’s gain.
Jesse Love took over the superspeedway mantle for Richard Childress Racing when teammate Austin Hill fell by the wayside with mechanical issues, bringing home another Daytona trophy to Welcome, North Carolina as he won Saturday’s United Rentals 300 in overtime.
For the first half of the race, it looked as if Hill was on his way to a fourth straight win in the season opener, but rear gear issues befell Hill and his No. 21 team, paving the way for Love to rise to the occasion.
Love ascended to the lead on a Lap 95 restart and remained a fixture at or near the front of the field for the remainder of the race, leading all but two of the final 32 laps.
However, Love would have to contend with the typical superspeedway chaos en route to the win, first with a crash that broke out with two laps to go in regulation, which pushed the race into overtime.
Then in overtime, he would have the Haas Factory Team duo of Sam Mayer and Sheldon Creed to battle against for the win.
Love was able to hold steady through the first lap of overtime, with a massive crash breaking out mid-pack behind him, which collected eight cars in the process when Justin Allgaier turned across the nose of Jordan Anderson, triggering the melee.
NASCAR threw the caution for the incident, but Love had already taken the white flag, making him the winner of the race.
The victory is the second Xfinity Series win of Love’s career, coming after a win at Talladega in 2024.
Multiple cars collected coming to the line, and @jesselovejr1 wins! pic.twitter.com/n1GRq8EmeF
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) February 16, 2025
“Man, once I got up front — I think Danny wanted to take sixth there behind the Haas cars, but I had to see what this baby had out front,” said Love. “We didn’t get to qualify, and it takes me a little bit to get out front sometimes. I’m trying to play chess sometimes and not checkers at Daytona.
“Man, I’m at a loss for words. It’s Daytona. I always cry here when they do the National Anthem. I’m star struck. I love Florida. Thank everybody for coming out tonight. This place is super special to me. You guys are as good as Talladega fans now!”
Love gave a tip of the cap to his RCR teammate Hill, acknowledging that he was the class of the field before his issues, but expressed his gratitude that it was still a RCR car that came away with the victory.
“Bummer what happened to 21. I’m not sure what happened but he was really dominant tonight, and we’re working on changing our culture here at RCR,” Love said.
“We’re winners. We know we are. We all want to win a championship for Richard Childress. Man, that thing was as fast as Xfinity mobile and I’m ready to go get to Atlanta now. It was awesome.”
The Haas duo of Mayer and Creed would finish second and third, respectively, followed by the JR Motorsports Chevrolet of Carson Kvapil and the Toyota of Taylor Gray rounding out the top-five finishers.
Afterwards, Mayer, who moved over to Haas this season after three and a half years at JRM, noted that if the race would have gone green to the finish, he and Creed should have been able to pull off a move on Love to settle the win amongst themselves.
“Having the 00 there behind me, I feel like we were going to be in a really good spot and the 2 [Love] was going to be a sitting duck,” Mayer said. “You can have a plan, but as soon as you get punched in the face, you don’t have a plan anymore. You never know until you get there what you’re going to do, but we were in a really good spot.”
The remainder of the top-10 finishers would go to Harrison Burton, Jordan Anderson, Dean Thompson, Jeremy Clements, and Patrick Emerling.
Next week, the Xfinity Series stays on the superspeedway train as it heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway next Saturday for the running of the Bennett Transportation and Logistics 250 at 5:00 pm ET on The CW.
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