Love Conquers Zilisch for Xfinity Championship; Heartbreak for JRM

Heading into Saturday night's NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship Race, the scoreboard amongst best friends Connor Zilisch and Jesse Love was 10 to 1, as far as race wins this season. As both drivers locked into the Championship 4, the scoreboard was reset, and it was winner-take-all at Phoenix Raceway.

In the end, Love was at his best when it mattered most as he came to life in the final Stage of Saturday night's race, made the race-winning pass on Zilisch with 25 laps remaining, and the driver of the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet pulled away to claim the victory and with it the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship.

"I just feel so clean, relieved," Love said in his victory interview on The CW. "It's been a tough year for me. Man, I've just put so much work into it. People like my dad and Scott Speed, my whole 2 team, have worked just as hard for my dream as I have for my own."

Man, thank you to Whelen. For one last time this car was as fast as Xfinity Mobile. It really hasn't set in yet. I just tried to tune out all the emotion. It doesn't feel real at all

As he led the final 25 laps of the race, Love was not able to come to grips with the fact that he was on his way to the championship, as he felt deep down that a late-race caution was coming to potentially spoil his night.

"I don't know. For me, I was just like I knew a caution was going to come out," Love explained in his post-race press conference. "I didn't have any emotion. I was honestly thinking the whole last few laps, A, not to put a lap car in a bad position where they get frazzled, but more important when the caution comes out, what I was going to do to get a better restart. I didn't win from the front row all night. We crossed the start/finish line, takes a while for my brain to shut off. I was just still focused on a restart. It was kind of a crazy feeling, really."

For the 20-year-old Love, this championship-sealing victory marked his second of the season, the other coming in the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway, and it's the third win of his 66-race NASACR Xfinity Series career.

Love, who was among the fastest cars in Friday's NASCAR Xfinity Series practice session, was missing that speed in the early portions of the race. While Love and his No. 2 team were frustrated on the team radio about the No. 2 Chevrolet's loose condition, they kept their heads about them, and crew chief Danny Stockman Jr. continued to make improvements to the car's handling.

"I think it kind of caught us off guard," Stockman said of the loose-handling condition on the first run of the race. "Typically, every week, after we practice, the first run of the race is always the loosest. I didn't necessarily anticipate it being that loose, and when I looked at the [tire] wears after the first run, I was like, 'wow,' but we didn't over-adjust. We tightened up a little bit."

A small adjustment, and the team keeping Love calm with reassurance that things would improve made all the difference.

"These kids, you have to keep them motivated," Stockman explained. "If you don't, you can loose them really quick. I just made sure I kept him motivated, kept him giving me the right info."

As the car improved, Richard Childress, who was communicating with the team on the second radio channel, noticed that Love was over-charging the corners, which was leading to him washing up in the center of the turns.

Once the message from Childress was relayed to Love, he adjusted his driving, the car came to life, and he emerged as the driver with the best car in the closing laps.

"Yeah, I just feed the information I see from where I was at," Childress said. "I'm not always right, but it helped."

It indeed helped. The combination of Stockman's adjustments and calming influence and Childress' advice led to Love going from a driver struggling to hang inside the top-10, to emerging as the race winner and series champion.

Love, who was possibly the hottest prospect in NASCAR a couple of years ago before his friend, Zilisch, came onto the scene, admits he's had a hard time this season adjusting to his friend garnering all of the attention. But at the end of the day, Zilisch's 10-win season fueled him to be better, and in the end, he earned an accolade, which allows him to put to bed the constant inner-comparisons to his friend.

"For quite a while, once I had like my breakout ARCA season, I was the hottest thing for the most part with the exception of probably Corey [Heim]. Then Connor kind of took that away from me. It's been really tough, right? Hard to deal with that," Love admitted. "Just the way that your friends look at you, the way the fans look at you, it's all tough. It was a hard pill for me to swallow."

Love continued, "I sat down and I was like I can't control what Connor does, right, but I can control what I do. Every day I woke up, he's motivated me to be better, right? I don't like losing to him. I've woke up every day trying to beat him, probably, more than myself. As much as tonight makes me feel really good, I'm not going to have Connor to compare myself to next year. I'm going to have to change that mindset pretty quick."

While Saturday night spelled elation for Love, it did anything but for Zilisch.

With his championship hopes drying up, Zilisch faded in the closing laps and was unable to hold onto the runner-up position, as Aric Almirola got around him to take the runner-up spot. Zilisch's dream of an Xfinity Series championship ended in a nightmare with a third-place finish.

Zilisch's pit crew gained him the lead with 42 laps remaining in the race, but unfortunately for the 19-year-old, as was the case all race, he didn't have the best car.

"I felt like we were never the best car," Zilisch admitted. "I feel like our pit crew did a really good job. We restart second, I got the lead from second both times. We led for 10, 15 laps; every run we just tanked. I don't know if I was pushing it too hard at the beginning of runs or what it was.

"After 20 laps, I just couldn't hang on. Just started to lose lateral grip. Yeah, I don't really know what we fought, but I feel like every run we were the second-best car. Whether it was Justin or Jesse, we just never were the best car."

The fact that it was his best friend, Love, who he lost out to, didn't ease the pain one iota for Zilisch.

"No, it doesn't make it feel any better," Zilisch anguished. "No. Good for Jesse, I'm really happy for him. Yeah, no."

To add insult to injury, Almirola's runner-up finish allowed the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team to wrangle the NASCAR Xfinity Series Owner's Championship from Zilisch's JR Motorsports team.

On a night that started with so much promise for JR Motorsports, the team owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. rolled snake-eyes, and will exit Phoenix with no championship hardware to show for their efforts on what had been a truly dominant season.

All of that winning this year was for not. That's how brutal the NASCAR National Series Playoff system is.

Polesitter Brandon Jones would end the race in fourth position, and he was followed across the stripe by Justin Allgaier, who ended the night in fifth, which was good enough for the third spot in the Championship 4 battle.

Allgaier looked like the driver to beat early in the race as he led a race-high 83 laps on his way to a win in Stage 2. However, Allgaier's night would unravel in a restart in the race's final Stage, where he felt he had overheated his tires.

"I don't really know what I could have done any differently. Maybe just happened to be a little more aggressive on that restart. Got the tires hot, something different. Just really disappointing," Allgaier said in a post-race press conference.

Allgaier continued, "I wanted to send [crew chief] Jim [Pohlman] off with a championship. You know, JR Motorsports as a whole, we didn't win an owner or a driver championship with three out of the four. So, that's super frustrating on my end, and all our ends."

While it was a frustrating conclusion for Allgaier, he had nothing but praise for Love, who he felt drove perfectly late in the race on Saturday night at Phoenix Raceway.

"Jesse just did a really good job tonight. I mean, that last 100 laps for Jesse was probably one of the best drives I've ever seen him put on," Allgaier said. "I've watched him race open wheel, and ARCA, and all of the different stuff, and that was one of the best drives he's put on. Congrats to the [No.] 2 team, they deserved it tonight."

Carson Kvapil, the final driver in the Championship 4 fight, could never really improve from 10th to 15th all race long, and ended the evening with a 14th-place result to claim the fourth spot in the championship fight.

Sammy Smith, Taylor Gray, Sheldon Creed, Austin Hill, and Justin Bonsignore rounded out the top-10 finishers.

Recommended Articles