For the fourth year in a row, Richard Childress Racing opened their season with a Daytona International Speedway victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. This time, it was Jesse Love who scored the win in Saturday’s (Feb. 15) United Rentals 300.
After teammate Austin Hill collected both stage victories, Love picked up where his RCR counterpart left off and dominated the closing stages of the race to score the biggest win of his young career.
Hill, who dominated most of the early parts of the race, saw his bid for four straight NXS wins at Daytona eliminated by mechanical issues in the final stage. Many other top contenders fell by the wayside through their involvement in several wrecks over the course of the day.
After commanding the closing laps, Love survived one last gasp from new Haas teammates Sheldon Creed and Sam Mayer on an overtime restart and took the win. The caution came out for the race’s Big One as Love took the white flag, ending it for good after the first overtime.
Winners
Controlling both lanes over the final stretch of the race, Love displayed the type of superspeedway dominance we are used to seeing out of his RCR teammate as the laps wound down tonight.
Love’s expert manipulation of the draft earned him a signature win at the sport’s biggest venue, as he can now call himself a Daytona winner. In addition to the prestige of a Daytona triumph, Love also clinched a playoff spot and can now freely chase checkered flags for the remainder of the regular season.
In spite of a faulty rear end eliminating him from a chance at securing his fourth consecutive season-opening victory at Daytona, Austin Hill still feels like a winner this weekend. As he has been known to do at these types of tracks, Hill charged to the front and stayed there as long as he was in the race. He swept both stages and easily kept multiple lines of cars behind him, blocking beautifully while racking up valuable points that helped minimize the damage of a DNF. It’s this skill set that makes him one of the top-tier title contenders for 2025.
Ahead of another superspeedway race next week in Atlanta, Hill has once again affirmed himself as the preeminent power of this style of racing in the Xfinity Series. He and his RCR team surely feel good about their chances next week at a track they have owned recently.
After questions swirled all offseason about the new team structure and personnel combinations with the Haas Factory Team, their two drivers quieted those concerns with solid runs at Daytona. Mayer and Creed scored finishes of second and third, respectively, and each spent their day at or near the front.
Excellent teamwork allowed the Haas cars to control the race along with the RCR cars, and this solid performance shows that the rebranded Haas team holds lots of potential this season.
Losers
Coming off a challenging season in which he failed to find victory lane, Brandon Jones entered Daytona looking for a fresh start with a familiar team in his return to Joe Gibbs Racing. Unfortunately for Jones, his afternoon lasted only five laps, as he was eliminated in an early incident that sent his Menards Supra sliding into the outside wall down Daytona’s backstretch.
Similarly to Jones, Nick Sanchez’s 2025 season also opened with a letdown and a trip to the garage after hitting the wall. While running towards the front with his new Big Machine Racing ride, Sanchez received an ill-timed push into turn 3 toward the end of stage two that sent his No. 48 car hard right into the SAFER Barrier, ending his night early. While Sanchez showed promise, his failure to finish due to an unfortunate incident leaves a hole in a disappointing Daytona weekend.
While both Chevy and Ford as manufacturers exhibited the ability to work well together, Toyota seemed to lack that same ability to dictate the action at the front of the pack. While misfortune eliminated a couple of their strong contenders early and perhaps hampered their overall strength, the Camry crowd may have reason to be concerned with overall speed relative to their competitors. Just two of their drivers, Taylor Gray and Dean Thompson, finished the night inside the top 10.
Fuel for Thought
While Love won the race, the story was Hill’s command of the lead and how strong he has become at these types of tracks. With another 56 laps led at Daytona, Hill continues to ascend higher on the all-time superspeedway laps led leaderboard in the Xfinity Series. He now has 588 career laps led if you include the newly-reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway, launching him into Dale Earnhardt, Jr. territory, who owns the series record at 691.
While Hill’s stats may be weighted differently, since Atlanta is now considered a superspeedway, his consistent dominance of this racing style proves his name belongs in the same conversations as those superspeedway luminaries above him. Being mentioned in the same breath as the Earnhardts, both father and son, is pretty prestigious territory.
As Hill enters rarified air, it begs the question: can he maintain this level of performance in such an unpredictable style of racing?
Paint Scheme of the Week
With the start of the new Xfinity Series season in Daytona came our first look at this year’s primary schemes on track. The most eye-catching for me was Justin Allgaier’s recognizable Brandt Agriculture colors, as this year’s scheme features actual agricultural products along with Brandt’s signature red and black.
This week, defending champion Allgaier’s scheme included oranges along each side, representative of the Sunshine State. This extra touch to improve upon the familiar Brandt scheme pushes this year’s design over the top for me.
Well that was a wild one.
— JR Motorsports (@JRMotorsports) February 16, 2025
Unofficial Results:
P4 – @Carson_Kvapil
P18 – @J_Allgaier
P24 – @sammysmithSS
P27 – @ConnorZilisch pic.twitter.com/yFHWKVDxWA
Where to Next?
Next Saturday, the drivers of the NASCAR Xfinity Series take on yet another superspeedway as they take to the high banks of 1.5-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway to contest the Bennett 250.
Since the track’s reconfiguration before the 2022 season, Austin Hill has dominated Atlanta with four wins, including victories in both of last season’s events. Coverage begins at 5:00 p.m. ET with television coverage on your local CW channel and radio coverage on the Performance Racing Network.
