NASCAR Xfinity championship tests integrity and brotherhood

The emotion afterwards was palpable.

On pit road, immediately after the race, newly crowned NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Jesse Love was in tears at earning a major career accomplishment. On the other end of the spectrum, Connor Zilisch was in tears because he was denied a championship that surely would have been his under any other format.

“I feel like emotion is part of the sport,” Zilisch said in his post-race press conference. “You work so hard for 38 weeks, yeah, coming up short sucks.”

10 wins
20 top 5s
32 starts

About an hour later, the vibe in the garage was just as surreal because there were three JR Motorsports teams amongst the final four and they all lost to a Richard Childress Racing driver that hadn’t won since the season opening event at Daytona.

To put it simply, JR Motorsports had a 75 percent chance of winning the championship at a minimum, but Zilisch, Justin Allgaier and Carson Kvapil got beat in the smallest sample size possible to decide a motorsport champion.

Right next to the four JRM haulers, were the two RCR haulers, and it was a total party with countless drinks and cigars being consumed to celebrate the moment. The polarity juxtaposed against the expectations was once again palpable in every sense of the word.

And even more powerful was the fact that Love and Zilisch are famously best friends. The absolute best of friends.

“In our group chat, the three amigos, me, Brent (Crews) and Connor, have always expected the most out of each other,” Love said. “Been really hard on each other at times. Always been there for each other.

“We’ve cultivated a really good culture between the three of us. I’m really happy for Brent to start to turn the corner. He had a tough summer. He kept his head down and he kept digging. Now he’s starting to really look really good.

“Yeah, it’s definitely great. We’re definitely going to celebrate.”

Zilisch congratulated Love in Victory Lane but it’s too be decided how quickly they can be bros in the traditional sense.

“I’m not sure how Connor is going to react to all this,” he said. “He came to me in Victory Lane because he’s a great person, but I don’t know, again, how he’s going to react to tonight. I’m not going to fault him in any way however he decides to react.

“We’ll see. Obviously, I’m going to be happy about it because I pulled the long end of the stick or the wishbone. But we’ll see.”

Zilisch says this is going to be an example of separating his ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ lives. 

“We travel with each other 38 weeks a year,” Zilisch said. “If you don’t have friends, you’re going to become miserable.

“I feel like I am a very personable person. I like to be friends with everybody. At times it can be hard to kind of put those two together. Yeah, you have to be able to separate them and understand what’s professional life and what’s just friendships.

“It’s tough to balance at times. I feel like Jesse and I have done a good job at that.”

‘Little known fact’ as Duke Love, Jesse’s father, put it after the race, Zilisch lived with them for about a year ‘when Connor’s family was remodeling their house.’

The whole families have a bond.

“Connor lived at our house and, and I got to know him up close and personal and he is just one of the most amazing kids I have ever met,” the elder Love said. “He is so pure-hearted but also has the heart of a lion on the track as we have seen.”

But the elder Love also says Zilisch accomplished the biggest goal of all this season no matter how this night played out.

“If I could take a 10,000 foot view perspective of this, I would say the purpose of the Xfinity level is to prove yourself and prove your mettle in order to do what,” he asked, hypothetically. “In order to reach the Cup level.

“Connor has reached that goal. Obviously a phenomenal season but I think a clear confluence of events for the season coming together for 2 team, Jesse and everyone at Richard Childress Racing.”

It was a challenging night for everyone in the sport, be it a fan or industry professional, because how do you reconcile Zilisch not winning the championship while also trying to credit Love for winning the game under the rules agreed upon?

That was best answered by Allgaier.

“You don’t,” Allgaier said. “Now, that being said, we had this conversation with Joey (Logano). Look, at the end of the day the format is the format. We have to race to the format, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s a one-race format, 33 races, five, seven, 10. Our job as racers and as teams is to go out there and make the most of it.

“I don’t dislike the format. It’s bit me way more than it’s ever helped me. Last year when it benefited us, it was great, right?

“I don’t know what the right answer is. I know last night social media was abuzz because Corey actually won. Tonight it’s probably going to be flip-flopped because Connor didn’t win.”

Understatement

“Look at the season that Jesse has had, and you look at what he did, not only did he win the championship, he won the race,” Allgaier said. “He drove by all of us. He did all the right things. That to me is doing what your job is and excelling at it. They rose to the occasion and we didn’t.

“I’m not mad about it. I just got to go work harder next year. If the format is the same, make the most of it. If not, we’ll do something different.”

But how does Love feel about the people who say his championship isn’t legitimate?

“I really don’t give a shit what people think,” Love said. “I get a big old trophy. I get a nice check. I get a lot of things that come out of this. Yeah, I don’t know. … At the same time, like, I’m not somebody that devalues what the fans say either, which kind of sounds contradicting now.

“When I say stuff and people call me out on Twitter or something, I do actually listen. Their opinions are valid. Obviously the world would be kind of a boring place if we all agreed on everything. That’s never going to happen.

“Yeah, I’m going to look at it like ‘I don’t really care’ at the end of the day. But I still like to be a part of I guess the circle of life and see how people react to certain things. I have my thoughts on it. They’re going to have theirs. That doesn’t bother me at all.”

Love is the champion.

And for the first time in quite awhile, Love was able to wrestle back some of the top prospect star power he had started to lose in comparison, mostly because Zilisch just kept on winning until getting beat head-to-head in Phoenix.

“It’s been really hard this year, right,” Love said. “At the end of the day, I want to walk in the room and feel like the man, right? I did tonight. For quite a while, once I had like my breakout ARCA season, I was the hottest thing for the most part with the exception of probably Corey (Heim) and then Connor kind of took that away from me.

“It’s been really tough, right? Hard to deal with that — just the way that your friends look at you, the way the fans look at you, it’s all tough. It was a hard pill for me to swallow.”

Love stopped comparing himself to his best friend.

“I decided I can’t control what Connor does, right, but I can control what I do,” Love said. “Every day I woke up, he’s motivated me to be better, right? I don’t like losing to him. I’ve woke up every day trying to beat him, probably, more than myself.

“As much as tonight makes me feel really good, I’m not going to have Connor to compare myself to next year. I’m going to have to change that mindset pretty quick.”

The next time they race each other as full-time competitors, and they absolutely will, it will be on Sundays and in a different championship format.

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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