Seven days after being stripped of victory at Rockingham, Jesse Love stormed to pole position for Saturday’s Xfinity Series Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega. Love led the opening round of qualifying, and when weather intervened, the Richard Childress Racing driver was awarded the top spot.
Jesse Love Finds Redemption in the Rain with Talladega Pole
Love posted a lap of 52.546 seconds (182.240 mph) to lead the field in the opening round of qualifying. But with rain arriving soon after, officials were forced to cut the qualifying session short at Talladega.
Xfinity Series qualifying has been moved to one round with incoming weather.
Jesse Love wins the pole.
— Jayski (@jayski) April 25, 2025
Love is no stranger to success at Talladega. He won here last spring, and he’s hungry to bounce back from his Rockingham disqualification. With ECR power under the hood, which has always delivered on these big tracks, Love will be confident of bagging another win.
“Absolutely, I feel like we put together a dominating performance, and I think that we want more of those,” Love said after the results were announced. “I feel like I can kind of sense in my own demeanor that we’ll be satisfied if we can get more of those performances.”
This is pole number seven for the 20-year-old in Xfinity Series competition—remarkably, in less than 50 career starts. Love expressed his confidence after the qualifying was called and said that he was looking forward to the race.
“I got a lot of faith in Danny Stockman and ECR power, CT springs, all the guys back in Welcome, always do a really good job here. So, yeah, looking forward to tomorrow. Obviously, my car’s as fast as Xfinity Mobile, and I think we got a really good shot at it. So, I’ve never sat on the pole here at Talladega, so that’s really cool.
“I think that we have a really good shot tomorrow. Just got to stay out front and when we do lose track position, you know, keep a calm head, and just kind of methodically make our way up and not make any low percentage moves that you know, put us back a few rows.”
With a lap of 52.734 seconds, Austin Hill slotted into P2 behind teammate Jesse Love, sealing a front-row lockout for Richard Childress Racing.
Reigning Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier will line up third for Saturday’s race, alongside underdog Joey Gase on the second row. Gase posted a career-best qualifying effort, securing fourth on the grid. This surpasses his previous best starting position of 14th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2020.
The top 10 in Friday’s qualifying session at the 2.66-mile superspeedway included Jeb Burton, Taylor Gray, Josh Williams, Daniel Dye, Ryan Ellis, and Jeremy Clements.
Katherine Legge, who missed last weekend’s race at Rockingham Speedway while driving the No. 32 Jordan Anderson Racing car before switching to the No. 53 Joey Gase Motorsports entry for experience, had no trouble securing a spot in this weekend’s field.
Legge is set to start from 27th place for Saturday’s Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega. Three of 41 drivers competing for 38 spots failed to make the cut for Saturday’s race.
Garrett Smithley, Austin Green, and Jake Garcia, who was making his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut, were among those who missed out.