NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Jesse Love, 20, is spending part of his offseason Down Under, racing the No. 57 Image Racing Holden Commodore ZB in the Dunlop Super2 Series\u2019 final two races of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Joined in Adelaide, Australia, by Cup Series<\/a> star Austin Cindric, who is representing Tickford Racing in the No. 5 Ford Mustang in the Repco Supercars Championship finale trio of races, Love appears to have taken to his new environment like a duck to water, despite the obvious learning curve.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s been unreal. It’s been so hard, so difficult, but I’ve learned just so much,\u201d the Richard Childress Racing star<\/a> told Supercars\u2019 YouTube channel<\/a>. \u201cIt’s I have a whole new perspective of road racing, of racing against this caliber of road racer and driver, and it’s unreal. I’m having so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Love\u2019s comments came on Thursday, during which he finished 22nd in both of the practice sessions, before qualifying 19th out of 22 for Race 11, which will be held on Saturday. He will start Race 12 on Sunday in 22nd place, after the qualifying session was canceled due to inclement weather, meaning the series used the second practice session times.<\/p>\n Ahead of his series debut, Love admitted that he believes that by dipping his toes into the Supercars water, other NASCAR stars will now be desperate to follow in his and Cindric\u2019s footsteps in years to come.<\/p>\n Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI’m sure that there is 25 Cup, Xfinity, and Truck drivers watching this weekend that want to be doing what I’m doing this weekend,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I’m sure that now that I’ve finally done it and I’m probably one of the first guys that come over and do it, that there’s going to be kind of a flood of NASCAR guys wanting to come over here and do it now. They know it’s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Love, he has every intention of returning in the future, with this brief taste of what\u2019s on offer having left him wanting more. \u201cAbsolutely, I want to come back. Part of the reason that I’ve been a little bit frustrated this weekend is I had some expectations, right? And expectations can ruin it, right?\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, I want to keep doing this so I can get a chance in the main game and really start learning even more. So, it’s probably going to take me a couple outings in the Super2 to really get to the level that I want to be at before I come over here.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLike, I’m very aware of the skill of all these guys and all the drivers and I’m not going to come in and say, \u2018Oh, I want to go straight to the main game.\u2019 Like, I understand the level of talent and expertise these guys have is unlike anything I even expected coming into it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI thought I knew coming into this event what it was going to be like. And honestly, it’s kind of blown my expectations out of the water.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only has Love been impressed by the drivers, but the car itself has also left a mark, recently telling AutoAction<\/a>, \u201cIn Xfinity, everything happens slower.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Super2 car, everything was happening very quickly. It felt really positive, really alive. Honestly, it was unlike anything I have ever driven before. Maybe the closest thing would be a shifter kart.\u201d<\/p>\n This is similar to comments made by Cindric regarding his Supercars Championship ride in comparison to the Cup\u2019s NextGen<\/a> car, telling V8 Sleuth<\/a> that his new car \u201cdrives a lot better\u201d than its American cousin.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, it\u2019s got more overbody downforce,\u201d the Team Penske star explained. \u201cEven just by looking at the car, it\u2019s a lighter car, grippier tyre, so all the things it does better.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of similar concepts as far as the limitations of the car, the rear grip under braking, a number of other things. It\u2019s comparable, but the current generation Cup car is a lot more rigid. Like, I\u2019ve really had to talk myself into using the kerb as much as I can with this car.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, it has a bigger effect on the driver, but the car still says gripped up, whereas if I hit some of these kerbs in a Cup car I\u2019d be in the blue tent!\u201d<\/p>\n Cindric wound up finishing 23rd in a rain-shortened race on Friday, one spot higher than he qualified. Race 33 is scheduled for Saturday, while the season finale, Race 34, will take place on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Jesse Love, 20, is spending part of his offseason Down Under, racing the No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[21621,49,48,8993,634,82,49537],"class_list":{"0":"post-313523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-austin-cindric","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-jesse-love","12":"tag-nascar","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-supercars"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}