HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Looking at the box score, Saturday’s Hard Rock Bet 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway was a successful outing for reigning NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie-of-the-year Jesse Love.

The 20-year-old from Menlo Park, Calif., started 20th after a qualifying struggle, but worked his way forward from the drop of the green flag and spent all but five of the 201 laps inside the top 15.

In fact, Love earned bonus points in both 45-lap stages and led four laps during stage two, but battled the balance on his No. 2 Whelen Engineering Chevrolet throughout a lengthy green-flag run in the second half of the race.

Though he ran at the back of the top five for a majority of the laps, Love faded down the stretch and lost fifth place to Sheldon Creed with 22 to go.

He briefly fell off the lead lap near the finish due to the blistering pace set by race-long dominator and NASCAR Cup Series star Kyle Larson, but received the free pass at the final caution with eight to go after Taylor Gray spun on the frontstretch to set up overtime.

Having to line up behind the lap-down cars, Love was unable to advance quickly through traffic during the two-lap sprint to the checkers, but still finished sixth for his fifth top 10 in six races this season.

Love’s average finish of 6.8 is best among Xfinity Series full-timers and ranks behind only Aric Almirola (2.0) among drivers with two or more starts in 2025.

However, the Golden State native admitted he was “perplexed” after the race at being unable to better contend with the frontrunners – and his three rivals in the $100,000 Dash 4 Cash bonus program, as well.

Love was committed to the low line all race long, a driving strategy that may have hurt him a bit in terms of maintaining his overall pace.

“We came here with a little bit of a fixed mindset, and maybe it was too much so,” admitted Love, who despite being sixth overall was worst among the four Dash 4 Cash-eligible drivers. “At the same time, I knew that if I didn’t commit to one thing, I would bounce back and forth between (driving) both (lanes) and end up worse. I tried to stay disciplined with what I came here to do (running the bottom) and what we thought was going to work. It just didn’t quite work out how we thought it would.

“I’m still proud of our Whelen team though. Our Chevrolet was extremely fast on fire off. We just missed a little bit on the long run,” Love continued. “I may be getting our tires too hot on the short run, because we were better than the guys that drove past us later. There are a couple things I can work on when we get back to the shop, especially with managing tires on the long run. I’m proud of our organization. It was a good day for both of us (Love and teammate Austin Hill. We both had a shot at the win at the end; I just feel like I didn’t have as much of the leverage I needed to be able to challenge better in overtime.

“Overall, I’m proud of the No. 2 team and look forward to next week.”

Love exits Homestead third in the regular season standings, just two points behind Haas Factory Team’s Sam Mayer and 31 back of series leader Justin Allgaier, who has won the last two races back-to-back.

His win in the season opener at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway in February has Love presumably locked into the Xfinity Series playoffs as one of 12 drivers that will contend for a championship this fall.

Though he won’t be eligible for the Dash 4 Cash this time around, Love will attempt to get back to victory lane when the Xfinity Series heads to Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. He set his track-best mark of ninth during the spring race at the half-mile ‘paper clip’ a year ago.

Broadcast coverage of the Marine Corps 250 is slated for Saturday, March 29 at 5 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Aric Almirola won both Xfinity Series races at Martinsville last season.