Folks, what’s the best feeling in NASCAR? If it is winning a Cup Series race, then the most ecstatic feeling should be winning the first-ever race of your life! “Man, what an experience, and the crowd out here like this is so cool. That’s what you dream of. Hopefully, I can come and do more,” said three-time supercar champion Shane van Gisbergen after winning his debut race at the 2023 Chicago street race. Then, Connor Zilisch debuted in the COTA race this season. The predictions ahead of the race placed him as a front runner to win the race. However, it ended in a DNF for him. The point is, a race gets hyped in anticipation of the debutant pulling out a surprise. But are all debutants aiming to win the race?
After Darlington, NASCAR has landed at the series’ fastest short track. And we all know who’s going to be a front-runner at Bristol Motor Speedway. Well, it’s obvious since Kyle Larson is the most successful driver in the next-gen era (3.3 average finish) on the track. And he’s coming from a winning momentum, bagging the Xfinity Bristol race. But in the Cup Series, hoping to upset the field, Richard Childress’s prodigy is making his debut. And Jesse Love has deliberately picked Bristol Motor Speedway.
Will Jesse Love repeat SVG’s history?
Look, debuting in the top NASCAR series is a big milestone in many drivers’ careers. It can often make or break things for their future; that’s probably the reason why drivers pick tracks they are best at. SVG had road course experience in Supercar, and it worked out perfectly for him in his debut. Similarly, Love has picked a short track. Now, for the folks who don’t know, Love is the 2023 ARCA series champion, and he always dominated at the short tracks there.
Richard Childress‘s driver spoke about why he picked Bristol. He said, “Yeah, it’s one of the better racetracks for me… kind of more my wheelhouse. I don’t really enjoy the flat track stuff a whole lot. I really enjoy the tracks with a lot of banking, a lot of grip, moving around, running the wall, getting on the top, bottom, the middle… kind of wherever there’s grip and a clean racetrack. I like to search around, and I can do that here.” Which is true, Love has been good on Bristol.
Jesse Love on what his goals are for his Cup Series debut and why it’s happening Sunday at Bristol: pic.twitter.com/peohNvK9DB
— Kelly Crandall (@KellyCrandall) April 12, 2025
In his Xfinity debut there last season, he managed to get a P4 finish, and in the recent race, he finished 6th! However, what is surprising is Love’s approach to racing. He spoke about how he doesn’t focus on winning anymore. “Yeah, I’m not a big goal person, really. I try to focus more like when I was younger, running like ARCA and stuff. I think I prioritized winning a lot. Always the end result, in a sense. I’ve kind of gotten away from that over the last probably two to three years now and kind of focus more on the execution part of it and the job that I do. So I always feel confident that if I, you know, do my very best job. I will leave the racetrack with a good result, with a chance to win, and that could be completely different this weekend,” He added.
Well, this might not be a bad approach after all. So far, it’s worked for him in the Xfinity Series. 2024 was his debut season, and he managed to get one win, 7 top 5s, and a P8 season finish. Which is commendable. And this season, 9 races in, he has already bagged one win and two top 5s and is currently 3rd in the points standing. So the formula for finishing well is working. And that’s also his plan for the Cup race, “You know, if I do a phenomenal job – realistically I’m probably not going to have a chance to win the Cup race, right? So for me, my goals, if I was only focused on winning, winning, winning, I feel like I’d be doing myself a bad doing, wrong doing… blanking on the word there. But you know, I think that I’m just focused on leaving the racetrack, having run all the laps and feeling like I did a good job, and I think if I do that, then I can have a result that will really satisfy me and the team.”
And Love has managed to get a P18 start in the race. But we won’t count him out just yet. If this Bristol race is anything like the 2024 spring race, track position might not matter that much! And the Cup drivers have their verdict on it!
Will the Bristol race have high tire wear again?
If you recall, the Cup series drivers were not ready for what unfolded in the 2024 spring race at Bristol. A few laps into the race, it became a tire management game. Denny Hamlin and the #11 team aced it with their strategy, taking the win. The race saw 54 lead changes, which is massive! And Hamlin thinks it’s pretty much going to be the same race. He said, “Everything looks the same. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have expected it, but certainly, it looks like the formula is striking again. So, yeah, it’s going to be an interesting race.”
While Hamlin is somewhat sure of the wear, Brad Keselowksi’s got no clue. “After last year’s spring race when the tires wore out, we came here with the 17 car [Chris Buescher] and tested, and the same thing happened. And we came back thinking, okay, be ready for tire wear in the summer race. The tires could have run 200 laps, 300 laps. So, we have no idea. We really don’t.”
And on the other hand, Joey Logano is thinking, thanks to the last spring race, they know what to expect: “It seems like we have at least an idea of what can happen as we lived this story once last spring with the tire wear the way it is going down to the cords. We can probably go back and try to figure out how to call the race the best way, but we don’t exactly know if that is what it’s going to look like.” Even the pole winner, Alex Bowman, is of the same belief.
He said, “Yeah, so, I think we all are much more prepared than we were last spring. Like we all saw it in practice last spring, and we are like it won’t be that way. We see that in practice at a lot of places. Martinsville, Dover, and a lot of places you court tires really quickly, and then it goes away in the race. Honestly, we found out quickly in the race that it wasn’t gonna be that way.”
What do you think, folks? Would we see the same tire wear? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
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