When Jesse Love executes and catches some good luck, something he is loathe to admit that he needs, the driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 2 believes he is every bit the championship contender as Justin Allgaier is.
It hasn’t looked it this year with Allgaier winning six races and having a massive points lead before the Chase for the Championship reset but a victory on Saturday night at Gateway has flipped the narrative.
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And beyond all of that, Love is just relieved to have won for the first time since his championship race triumph last year because he made a commitment to Richard Childress Racing before leaving for the Cup Series next year.
He’s honoring it.
“I say I don’t give a crap about Twitter, but I read it and it could come across that we’re the reigning champions and I’m checked out and focused on other things,” Love said in reference to his Wood Brothers opportunity. “It was just nagging at me because my honor and my word and work ethic is very important to me.
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“I know that I’m not the most talented guy on the racetrack. I know I’m not always the fastest, but I work my ass off and I hang my hat on that.”
He never wanted Richard Childress Racing to think he was in any way responsible for their not winning a race because he was checked out.
“I remember leaving Richard Childress’ office, just my second time meeting him, and I had the cajónes to promise him that ‘I will make this place better than when I showed up, and I will leave it in a better place’ and that he will never question that I woke up every day to give it is all for the No. 2 team.”
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He’s already accomplished that mission, but with a win and sitting just 16 points behind championship leader Sheldon Creed, back-to-back championships are a realistic plausibility despite everything that went wrong this season.
“I said the word ‘luck’ is overused a lot and I didn’t always want to admit it was real, but I feel like it has been this year,” Love said. “We have had a lot of bad luck. If you look at the nuts and bolts of it, we are plenty of good enough to win the championship.
“I know we can beat (Allagier) and (Carson Kvapil) and (Creed) and (Sam Mayer,) whoever makes a run at it. It’s going to take a lot of grit and tenacity, like you saw tonight. … I’m not saying Justin doesn’t have a lot of grit but I’m saying that not many teams have had as much bad happen to them as we have.
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“It’s given us this mentality that we are not going to be denied. We are going to execute because we have been denied all year.”
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This championship battle gets closer with each passing week, and now with seven races to go until the end. There was increased clarity about who the real contenders are but very little separation at the top.
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Sheldon Creed
Justin Allgaier -3
Carson Kvapil -9
Jesse Love -16
Austin Hill -61
Sam Mayer -61
Sammy Smith -64
Corey Day -69
Brandon Jones -76
Parker Retzlaff -83
Taylor Gray -86
Rajah Caruth -118
Saturday night was a real missed opportunity for Kvapil, who led the most laps, but ultimately got nudged out of the lead by Love and faded to fifth by the end of the race.
“It is what it is, right?” Kvapil said. “I’m probably not impressed about it, but I hope when the shoe is on the other foot that it’s not a big deal. I probably wasn’t the best car there at the end. I was just trying to hold on and trying to get those guys racing. Definitely had more pace than me, but I don’t know. I mean, it’s for the win. I get it, right? Whoever gets clean air and gets out front’s going to probably win the race. So, it’s an important pass to make but just hope whenever the shoe is on the other foot, there’s no complaining.”
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Kvapil really wants to stack up wins, but he also scored the second most points overall on Saturday, which is why he is now within nine points of the lead. Is that a good night?
“I mean, if you’re thinking about it solely on a championship run type of thing, yes, I think that was a good enough day,” Kvapil said. “But at the same time, we led a bunch of laps and did all the right things and we were this close from driving away at the end.
“So, it’s tough to lead laps like that and run up front all day like that and do all the right things and for it to come up short. But that’s racing and the big picture is to keep stacking points and doing all the right things.
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“I feel like, if we knock out a win, that’s 20 extra points, and that would have helped today. But we’re just going to keep doing the best we can to not overstep, not have a bad day, minimize mistakes, keep it up front and try to race for wins.”
Allgaier has dominated so much of this season so it’s hard to conceive him losing the championship but that has happened with back-to-back finishes outside of the top-10 to start The Chase for the Championship.
This week, he was involved in the incident between William Sawalich and Corey Day.
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“Disappointed is probably the best word, right? At the end of the day, it’s how it goes,” Allgaier said. “I got caught up in a similar situation last year where guys got wrecked into one.”
He says they probably should have pit to address the damage to his fender.
“We decided not to pit when the damage happened,” Allgaier said. “In hindsight, obviously I wish we would have, but I felt like there was not enough damage. I mean, I watched (Day) last week with the fenders hanging off of it to be up there and battling.
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“We put (our hopes) on that last caution, and I wish I had a little bit more of that to be able to run through, but all in all, I’m so proud of the team. I’m proud of the effort.”
Allgaier sat down on the pit road wall with Sawalich’s crew chief Jeff Meendering to air some frustrations with getting collected in his bad blood with Day.
“It’s one thing for those two to have a problem on the racetrack, but when it starts affecting other people that are in The Chase, I think that’s where it’s really difficult,” Allgaier said.
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Lost in all of this is that Creed, the 2020 Truck Series champion, is leading the standings with seven races left to go after finishes of first and second to open the playoff format.
“We have seven left and I though the battles were heated tonight and I think they’re going to be heated the next seven,” Creed said. “So a lot of fun racing ahead. I just thought we did what we needed to do. I didn’t think we were the best car. I though we were strong, but I just needed a few things to be better and just worked really hard on it all night to keep getting it better.
“My pit crew has been really strong lately and they got me out good there for the end, get to second, had something for (Kvapil), so that was fun. And then the two refired really good. And yeah, it was tough to just sit there and watch them like 10 car lengths in front of me.”
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But now he goes to Bristol where he’s been second in each of the last two Night Race weekends
“We ran second to Larson pretty much all night there in the spring so I bet we’ll come back pretty similar and try to be the best car all night,” he said.
It’s also true that Bristol is Allgaier’s best second best track too, behind Phoenix, so this is far from over.
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