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NASCAR Jesse Love, NASCAR's defending second-tier series champion, has his eyes on a move to the top circuit. Sean Gardner / Getty Images Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love, the reigning NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion who is currently second in the series standings entering this weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway. This interview is available in full on the 12 Questions Podcast. Advertisement 1. Do you typically arrive for things early, late or on time, and why? Never late. Most things I arrive to early, and I try to have like a five-minute buffer in case I’m late. That’s how I do it. I don’t like being late because it causes a lot of stress. So typically, I’m either early, or if I’m not early, then I’m on time. 2. What is the pettiest thing that annoys you during a race weekend? For example, (at Las Vegas) I missed the bottom in (Turns) 3 and 4 in qualifying and walked in the trailer, and (crew chief Danny) Stockman sits down and he really wanted to drive home that I missed the bottom in 3 and 4 — as if I didn’t just live it, you know what I mean? So that sometimes is a little bit frustrating, but I know that he just wants me to be better. But probably the biggest thing is when you’re locked in and you’re focused, and then everybody’s asking you what’s wrong. I don’t like that because I’m just trying to focus. And everybody’s like, “What’s wrong? You OK? ” I’m just focused, I’m just quiet. Sometimes you kind of always have to talk for people to think that you’re OK. 3. What is something you’ve learned to stop explaining to people? Man, a lot. The saying is, “The second you start explaining, you’ve already lost. ” So having to explain yourself can typically lead you into trouble. I try not to explain myself no matter what. 4. If you could go back to the early days before you reached NASCAR, what is one different decision you wish you had made? When you’re running ARCA and Super Late Models, at the end of the day, what you do there has zero impact on your career trajectory. … When you’re a kid, and you’re running ARCA and stuff, you’re so hyper-focused on, “I have to go win and run well and succeed, ” and you don’t really learn a whole lot because you’re just so wrapped up in the result. You’re so results-oriented because you’re so young. And when you’re running lower classes when you’re younger, you honestly don’t learn as much as you should because you’re so wrapped up in the moment. Advertisement So when I was younger, if I could just disassociate from results and just focus on adapting and being better, who knows how different I’d be now? 5. What is it like to be in a debrief after a bad race? It’s not that bad, at least for me. Everybody’s different, but for us, we don’t just sit there and sulk about it and moan about how sorry we feel about ourselves. We just sit down and focus on what we could have done better and how to fix the problem. So it’s really not bad for us. 6. I’m asking two wild-card questions: One about the past and one about the present. Regarding the past, when you were in the press conference after becoming the youngest champion in NASCAR history in the K&N West Series (as a 15-year-old), you said you remember trying to sit up with good posture. What was it like trying to do so many of the right things at such a young age? I remember making sure to have great posture during the interview in 2020? . Thanks for the full circle moment Jeff ❤️ https: //t. co/Bji YCHwei A — jesse love jr (@jesselovejr1) March 6, 2026 I tried to live by — and I still live by this — “Everything counts all the time. ” That’s what my dad always told me. The things you don’t feel like count, they might not seem big in the moment, but they add up, and they start building your stock. You can continue to just put pennies in a bucket and build your stock up if you do small things, like when you’re 15 and you’re having good posture and you’re trying to speak and say the right things. It does matter. I haven’t changed one bit. There are still things I work on. I’m still trying to be just a little bit better than I was yesterday every day that I wake up, and just pound the stone. 7. As far as the present, your best friend Connor Zilisch has now gone into the Cup Series. You’re the reigning series champion here and obviously want to get to Cup as soon as you can. How do you view where your career stands right now? Do you feel urgency and rushed? Probably midway through last year, I felt like, “I could go into a Cup car, but I don’t necessarily need to right now. ” I want to get in the Cup Series and be able to perform right away on a fast timeline instead of having to wait three years like a lot of people. Advertisement I could have gone out and dominated for a year, like Connor did, and move up. But Connor, not in a negative way, it’s hard to build grit and tenacity if you just show up and bust ass right away. When you have to really work at it and get better at something and struggle as well, you start to get that most important piece of your life, which is grit. I had to work really hard at it last year to get to the state I’m in now. I feel like every (O’Reilly) race I show up to, I’m the best in the field and I feel like at least now, I’m on a different level than the people I’m racing against. Obviously, some weekends (Kyle) Larson is in the field or Connor is in the field, and those guys really test you. Now I feel really confident in myself that I can go to the Cup level, and whether I have success right away or struggle right away, I can work myself out of any hole because I’ve built that grit. But yeah, I have no intentions of running another year in O’Reilly. I pretty much have to go to the Cup Series next year because there’s no situation that I can find, at least, that I would be full-time. You can only stay at this level for so long until funding and things like that don’t work. … I’ve never said in an interview before that I feel 100 percent ready to go Cup racing. But this year, how it started and how the offseason went, I’ve proven to myself I’m ready to make that step. So there’s different options and things available for next year, and I have to figure out what’s best for me and my future. 8. If you could get any driver’s helmet in the history of motorsports, whose would it be? One thousand percent, I’d pick Connor’s rookie helmet from the (O’Reilly) Series. I learned more from Connor last year than any driver I’ve ever raced against or raced with. The way he challenged me to be better, the way he frustrated me in ways, how close I was to the fire to be able to see it, it really was the best thing for me, even though I absolutely hated every second of it in the moment. I’m so grateful for that now. And there’s a lot of emotional connection to last year, being able to race with Connor and him being able to push me to be better and get the absolute most out of myself. So I would never ask him for it, but that’d be the one thing that I would pick. 9. When things aren’t going well, do you prefer people leave you alone or check in on you? It depends. There are very few — probably three or four — people I would like to check in on me if there’s something personal going on. And if there’s something work-related going on I’m going through, yes, there are times where the questions can be overloading and you’re just like, “I just need to have a second to process and work through it. ” Advertisement But I feel like I’m pretty selective on who I let into my life in that light. So the people who do have the ability to reach out and ask me that all the time don’t bother me at all. But I’m definitely very selective in that sense. 10. What is something about yourself that would surprise people who think they “know” you? Very few people really know me. I have a lot of layers. I can be a bunch of different Jesses. I used to think that was disingenuous. I always prided myself on being genuine. But then I realized I have to wear a lot of different hats with the life I live and the job I have and things like that. So I’ve gotten really comfortable now understanding it’s OK to be a different person day to day. When I walk into the gym in the morning or show up to the racetrack, I’m a completely different person than when I go home and I’m with my girlfriend, Georgia, or I’m with some family for a dinner. Those are two completely different sides of me. 11. What is something you laugh about now that was absolutely not funny at the time? There’s not a lot. When I think about those moments, I’m thinking about times where I’ve told my friends, “This is really bad now, but we’re gonna laugh about this in like three years. ” And I obviously can’t say those. We’ve gotten ourselves in pickles before; everybody has. 12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was William Byron and he wanted to know: “What’s your favorite place to eat where you live? ” He says he’s a foodie so he’d like to know. Me and William have been out to eat a couple times, and he does like food. I would say my favorite restaurant in the world is Steak 48 in Charlotte. If you haven’t been, it’s amazing. I’ve eaten at the No. 1 restaurant in the world in New York on my birthday one time, and it was awful compared to Steak 48. What was wrong with the No. 1 restaurant in New York? The restaurant in New York was called Le Bernardin, and my girlfriend knows I’m a big food person. I love food. She was like, “We’ve got to go. ” So we went there for my birthday. She got us reservations. You walk in, you saw Angelina Jolie eating there, it was crazy. I was like, “This is wild. ” We sat down, paid way too much for dinner, especially how old I was then. Did not have the money for that. And yeah, it just wasn’t good. I don’t feel like the flavors were working, or it wasn’t flavors that fit my palate, and I have a pretty open palate, so I was pretty confused. There was just nothing that I was like, “Oh, this is amazing. ” Do you have a question I can ask the next person? (Love said he’ll submit a question when he knows who the person is. ) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, Jeff Gluck. com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.