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Xfinity Series rookie Jesse Love wins United Rentals 300 pole award

JHby:Jonathan Howard02/17/24

Jondean25

Daytona Jesse Love pole award
Nadia Zomorodian/News-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK

The 2023 ARCA Menards Series champion is starting his NASCAR Xfinity Series career off strong. Jesse Love takes the pole award at Daytona. He will lead the United Rentals 300 to green later today.

Richard Childress Racing takes the top two spots in qualifying. Jesse Love beat out Austin Hill by just a fraction of a second. The Xfinity Series rookie went out in his first qualifying round of the year and took the pole.

Of course, his teammate is also a really good superspeedway racer. Those RCR cars are always ready for Daytona, folks. What a debut from Love.

Austin Hill has dominated this race and most superspeedways over the last two years. He will try and get another win over his rookie teammate. However, it will be tough. Love was a winner in 10 of 20 races in the ARCA Menards Series a year ago.

Love is a driver that has real skill and talent. With RCR power behind him, he should be able to compete for wins early. Already in his Xfinity Series career, he is undefeated in qualifying. Not a bad start to his career.

If he keeps this up, Jesse Love will find himself moving up the NASCAR ranks again here soon enough. The United Rentals 300 will start at 4:30 PM EST, half an hour up from the original 5:00 PM start.

Jesse Love takes pole position, SVG shines

How about these Xfinity Series rookies? Jesse Love earned himself the pole and Shane van Gisbergen laid out a top-5 lap. The Kaulig Racing group was solid. AJ Allmendinger will start P3 with SVG at P5.

The Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year race is going to be a fun battle. Along with Love and Van Gisbergen, Dawson Cram, Hailie Deegan, and Leland Honeyman will also be competing for ROY. These drivers all have different backgrounds, and it will be interesting to see which ones rise and which fall short.

For a second, it looked like SVG was going to steal the pole award in his Xfinity debut. After all, he won his Cup Series debut in the Chicago Street Race.

While the New Zelander wasn’t able to secure the pole award, he will start further up front than he did in the ARCA race late last night. Let’s hope that his Xfinity debut goes better than the ARCA one. The big story though, Jesse Love doing Jesse Love things. Just as impressive as he was last year in ARCA. Let’s see how he races.