Jesse Love makes the most of wreck recovery, gains ground in Xfinity playoffs with Talladega top 10

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- As Jesse Love lined up among the top 10 for an overtime restart at Talladega Superspeedway with a wounded race car, his Richard Childress Racing crew offered a quick reminder to "have the mindset of trying to optimize the day." After surviving Saturday's biggest wreck to salvage a sixth-place finish on an afternoon full of pitfalls, Love managed to smile, with his optimization level mostly met. "I'd say that's Talladega," Love said. "Yeah, that sounds about right." Love started from the pole position and led a race-high 28 of 98 laps, scraping his way to a top-10 result in Saturday's United Rentals 250. The outcome helped the 19-year-old Xfinity Series rookie bolster his stature in the playoff standings, going from a slim three-point edge over the elimination line to a more favorable 22-point cushion with next weekend's Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course looming. RELATED: Official results | At-track photos: Talladega Love maneuvered low to miss most of the late-race bedlam that erupted entering Turn 1 with three laps remaining in regulation. His No. 2 RCR Chevrolet, however, caught the sliding No. 88 Chevy of Carson Kvapil on his nose, bowing and flaring the right-front fender as the two cars skidded onto the apron. His team opted against pitting for repairs, keeping his track position intact in sixth place. Love didn't rise once the race went green for the final two-lap dash to the end, but finished where he restarted. "I mean, I thought we maximized the day once that wreck happened with the 88," Love said. "We're not going to win (after that) unless something crazy happens, which we were kind of close. But no, I'm proud of our guys. I thought me and my spotter did a good job maximizing the day. I feel like I've kind of been the weakest link of the speedway stuff, and I feel like today I kind of made a good jump forward and controlled my own destiny a little bit better." His fate nearly turned on a Lap 75 melee that preceded the larger crash. When Jordan Anderson, Dean Thompson and Shane van Gisbergen became entangled through the tri-oval, Love slowed his car enough to avoid it. "God works in mysterious ways," Love told his team over the No. 2 radio communications. "I'm glad we missed that wreck." The second bite nearly 20 laps later wasn't as kind, but as No. 2 crew chief Danny Stockman surveyed the damage from the later contact, the optimization from his pit-box decision was still top of mind. "It's a speedway race, right? I felt like we brought the fastest car. I really felt like our pace was where it needed to be," Stockman told NASCAR.com. "But you can't control circumstances, and I felt like we controlled the circumstances that we were dealt as best as we could and probably got the best finish that we could with, obviously, the damage, as you see. So it was quite a lot of thought in not pitting -- a lot of pictures, a lot of data that we went through to make sure that we weren't rubbing a tire and all that stuff -- and we just knew with a green-white-checkered that if we pitted, we'd be back there in 25th and not be able to get up there. So I'm sure everybody heard our radio conversation on the strategy that we had there at the end of the race with the green-white-checkered and it worked out." Austin Hill, Love's RCR teammate, had his own damage to contend with after the Lap 75 crack-up snared his No. 21 Chevrolet. Liberal application of high-speed tape helped Hill meet the minimum lap-time requirement when the race resumed under green, and he eventually limped home 23rd as the final car on the lead lap. Hill made his own salvage effort happen with strong finishes of fourth and first at the stage breaks. That bonus allowed Hill to collect 31 points Saturday, pushing his margin over the provisional elimination line from plus-27 to plus-37 heading to Charlotte's Roval. "I knew it was about to happen," Hill said of the turmoil unfolding in front of him. "Everybody's just moving around. Everybody's so tight together, just moving around too much, and when I saw the 97 (van Gisbergen) get turned down the hill, I knew I couldn't lift because I had guys behind me and just drove into everybody in front of me. So it was just unfortunate, but solid effort just to come back from what we did have, damage-wise."