Jesse Love says NASCAR Cup Series debut is a 'full circle moment'

On Sunday, Jesse Love will be faced with an arduous task: making his NASCAR Cup Series debut in a 500-lap race at Bristol Motor Speedway. 

The 20-year-old from Menlo Park, California, is a veteran of 42 NASCAR Xfinity Series starts and has won Xfinity Series races at Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona International Speedway. But a Cup Series race — especially one at Bristol — presents a much bigger challenge. 

"I'm focused on leaving the racetrack having run all the laps and feeling like I did a good job," Love said in a news conference on Saturday. "I think if I do that, I can have a result that really satisfies me and the team." 

Love finished sixth in Saturday's Xfinity Series race, and will start Sunday's Food City 500 in 19th after laying down a lap of 15.137 seconds in qualifying. Love was the 31st-fastest in Saturday's Cup Series practice session. 

Love will make his Cup Series debut with Richard Childress Racing and the No. 33 team, which made its 2025 debut at Darlington with Austin Hill on April 6. Love has driven for RCR in the Xfinity Series over the past two years, and has the likes of Austin Dillon and Kyle Busch to lean on in the Cup Series garage. 

"He (Kyle Busch) has been helpful for sure," Love said. "I always feel like Kyle has been (an) open book. It's really cool to pick a guy's brain like that."

Preparation can make or break a driver's debut, especially at the highest level of stock car racing. Love made sure to leave no stone unturned. 

"I think I probably ran about 2,000 laps this week in the simulator," Love said. "Just ran a lot of laps, trying different things. One thing I did this week was run a couple 500-lap races by myself on iRacing, just to condition myself to the mental drain it's going to take to run 500 laps. Obviously, it'll be the longest race of my life." 

The emotion of a NASCAR Cup Series debut can take away from the competitive side of things, and vice versa. Love says he's managed to control those emotions so far. 

"I was driving up here, and I kind of got all my emotion out on the way up here," Love said. "Driving up here is very mountainous, and it was like driving to Baylands (Raceway Park in Fremont, Calif.) where I grew up racing quarter midgets. It was a similar terrain and route." 

"That was a cool emotional experience for me, remembering when I was five, six, eight years old running quarter midgets with my dad, driving up this winding, one-lane road up to the go-kart track and now doing the same thing to go Cup race. That was a cool, full circle moment for me."

In NASCAR, things have a tendency to come full circle. Whatever result Love's Cup Series debut at Bristol entails, it's sure to be an afternoon he'll never forget — and if his Xfinity Series results continue to impress, it'll be far from the only afternoon he can call himself a NASCAR Cup Series competitor.