LEBANON, Tenn. — For 120 laps, Jesse Love established himself as one of the drivers to beat Saturday night at Nashville Superspeedway.
But as fate would have it, Love’s night unraveled after a loose wheel forced him to pit road with 67 laps left in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race, sinking the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing team from winning contention to a 16th-place finish in the Sports Illustrated Resorts 250.
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Love led 87 laps after starting from the pole position Saturday, dazzling with fierce battles against eventual race winner Justin Allgaier. But Love felt a familiar vibration in the rear of his car, signaling his time out front would be short-lived.
“The same thing I felt in Stage 2 when me and Justin were racing,” Love told NASCAR.com. “I started to feel the vibration, and you know, sometimes here it’s rubber build-up. And so yeah, they told me after the Stage 2 pit stop, that it was a loose wheel. So when I felt it again, I knew that it was a matter of time. For whatever reason, if I didn’t arch my entry, I didn’t feel like it was as bad, so I tried to just start chopping my entries and see if I could get to my pit window, and I think another lap and it would have fell off.”
If there was any bright side to a winning run derailed, Love did nurse the car to a point within the team’s fuel window, allowing his team to avoid an extra pit stop late in the event. But pitting at least 20 laps earlier than the other leaders put the No. 2 Chevrolet at a disadvantage on tires, leading to a finish outside the top 15.
Crew chief Danny Stockman appeared dejected after another loose wheel impacted a good run for the No. 2 team.
“It’s pretty disheartening (when) you have a car capable of winning,” Stockman told NASCAR.com. “We got a little bit loose the second stage, and I tightened it back up and took off and we had a four-second lead again. And then the right-rear (wheel) comes loose, and we have no reason why. That’s the disheartening part. We’ve got to go back to the shop and try to figure out what’s going on. It’s the same procedure that we’ve done for years, and we’ve been having quite a few loose wheels this year. We don’t really understand why and what, so it’s on us. It’s on us.
“We can build fast race cars, but if we’re not executing these races, I mean it’s as simple as beating yourself, and we beat ourselves not knowing why, so we’ve got to figure that out.”
What weighed heavier on the team was the unscheduled pit stop carried longer than it should have. Stockman communicated that he wanted the team to install spacers on the rear wheels during the stop, but only the right-rear spacer was placed at first before Stockman had to reiterate adding the left-rear spacer, slowing down the stop even further.
Love, the defending O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion, remains winless after 16 races this season, but his No. 2 car has been in the hunt multiple weeks, including one week prior at Charlotte Motor Speedway before inclement weather cut the event short and left Love second.
“We should have won five races this year already,” Stockman said. “We’re in contention. We’re building fast race cars, but we’re not finishing where we deserve, and we’ve just got to go. We’ve got to go back and figure out why.”
Despite the frustration, Love is keeping his head held high and attempting to move on from his recent setbacks quickly.
“I can speak for myself, and I’m just gonna show up on Monday and try to work even harder, just keep putting hay in the barn until one day I can eat it all,” Love said. “God’s got a better plan for me than I do for myself, so all I can control is my attitude and the way I lead my team and the effort I put in and how I hold myself and how I support my team through this as well.”