XFINITY: Sammy Smith Named Winner After Jesse Love Fails Inspection
UPDATE: Jesse Love, driver of the No. 2 Whelen Engineering Chevrolet, has been disqualified from Saturday's NASCAR Xfinity Series North Carolina Education Lottery 250 at Rockingham Speedway. Justin Bonsignore, who finished 36th, has also been disqualified.
Sammy Smith has won the North Carolina Education Lottery 250, over Parker Retzlaff, Harrison Burton, Brennan Poole, and Taylor Gray.
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In a chaotic race, which featured 14 cautions and two red flags, it was 20-year-old Jesse Love who pulled off the win in Saturday's North Carolina Education Lottery 250 at Rockingham Speedway.
The win marks the second win of the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season for Love, and it's the driver's third career win, and it came in what was his 43rd career start. Of the three wins that Love has in the Xfinity Series, this is the first that has come at a non-superspeedway.
Love says he has been in the mix a lot at the short tracks, and intermediates, but had just not been able to close the deal. This time around, he was able to pull it off.
"I feel like I have run fifth place and sixth place, a lot. And I've run up front, and led laps and stuff, but couldn't really close it out," Love explained. "I think a big part of it was just getting my aggression level up a little bit. I feel like I was definitely aggressive today. Getting that aggression level up, and still being able to trust my talent that I can not put myself in a spot to wreck."
The Richard Childress Racing driver led early and often as he was in front of the field six times for 53 laps, which was second only to Ryan Sieg.
"[Sieg] was actually really, really fast," Love said in his post-race press conference.
While Sieg was a fixture at the front of the field and led for 77 laps, the driver of the No. 39 RSS Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse lost the lead under caution on Lap 239 when his car fell below pace car speed as he was attempting to save fuel.
Sieg would then get severely damaged in a multi-car melee on a restart on Lap 241, which would effectively end his bid to win the race.
After an incident between Jeb Burton and Connor Mosack brought out the caution on Lap 248, the race was sent into Overtime, where Love would outduel Sammy Smith for the race win.
While Smith, who held the lead going into the Overtime finish, didn't get his first win of the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, his runner-up finish was good enough to secure the JR Motorsports driver the $100,000 bonus for being the highest-finishing of the four Xfinity Dash 4 Cash drivers in the field.
"That was good hard racing right there. I ran him hard on that first restart, when I got the lead. So, congrats to Jesse," Smith said. "We brought a really fast car today, just thanks to TMC, Pilot, Allstate Peterbilt Group Chevy. Our car was as fast as Xfinity."
Parker Retzlaff, who narrowly missed out on the pole by 0.001 seconds earlier in the day, finished third in the race after charging toward the front on fresh tires. Retzlaff rallied from a cut tire earlier in the day.
The 21-year-old Retzlaff tied his career-best finish, which is a great result, but he was left wondering if he made the wrong moves on the Overtime restart.
"I thought [Love] and [Smith] were running out [of fuel], so I took the outside [lane]. Maybe it was the wrong move because I guess they both had enough fuel to make it. I thought we made the right decision. We made good adjustments all day, and had a great car. Couldn't get it done," Retzlaff explained.
Harrison Burton continued his solid season with AM Racing as he collected a fourth-place result, and Brennan Poole finished fifth. Poole's fifth-place finish made it a double-top-five day for Alpha Prime Racing, which also fields Retzlaff's No. 4 Chevrolet.
Taylor Gray, Austin Hill, Josh Williams, Jeb Burton, and Daniel Dye rounded out the top-10 finishers in Saturday's NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Rockingham Speedway.
Kasey Kahne, who was making his first NASCAR National Series start in nearly seven seasons, finished 15th in what was a trying day. Driving the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, Kahne qualified solidly in fourth, and in the early portion of the race, he had settled into the sixth position.
Then, on Lap 52, Kahne was swept up in an incident with Katherine Legge after Legge was contacted by William Sawalich.
"I couldn't see anything in front of [Sawalich] at the time until he slowed way up, and so I slowed way up and went left and then the car in front of him went left, and I hit [Legge]," Kahne said of the early-race crash.
After repairs were made to Kahne's car, he found himself a lap down, but would fight his way back onto the lead lap on Lap 130.
Kahne would be swept up in another crash with 10 laps remaining in the race, but would be able to remain on the track, and would be able to pick his way back to a top-15 finish in the chaotic closing laps of the event.
The 45-year-old driver wouldn't say definitively whether he would be open to returning to the NASCAR Xfinity Series for additional starts or not following the race, but said that he had fun on what was a very hot day at Rockingham Speedway.
"I enjoyed it, I definitely enjoyed it. I really looked forward to it, put a lot into it. It was really fun working with the RCR group, going up to the shop again, just being part of a NASCAR team again was really cool, and all of the people at RCR were really great," Kahne said. "I enjoyed it, I don't know about more in the future, but I'm really glad I did this."
*This story will be updated with post-race quotes and additional details about the race.
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Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.