Jesse Love celebrates in victory lane after winning Saturday night’s ARCA Menards Series race at Elko Speedway. Photo: ARCA Menards Series
Based on the amount of laps Jesse Love led Saturday night at Minnesota’s Elko Speedway, one might assume the Venturini Motorsports driver dominated en route to his fourth ARCA Menards Series victory in five races.
William Sawalich might suggest otherwise.
Love, the 18-year-old from Menlo Park, California, emerged victorious from a hard-fought battle against his rival from Joe Gibbs Racing. The tussle began in the opening laps after Love took the lead from pole sitter Sawalich.
It ended on a restart with 100 laps to go in the 250-lap event. Restarting on the inside, Love slammed into Sawalichta for the lead. Love’s teammate Sean Hingorani bumped Sawalich into a spin.
Despite Sawalich’s best efforts to climb back to the front over the final third of the race, he ran out of laps and settled for a second-place finish.
All of this, of course, occurred one week after Sawalich ran down, bumped and passed Love to win on the final lap at Michigan’s Berlin Raceway.
Love after the race was asked whether he and Sawalich raced clean Saturday night on the 0.375-mile bullring.
“On (Sawalich’s) terms, yeah. I’d like to say so,” Love said. “At the end of the day, that’s just good old short-track racing, I guess. I can do that. It was fun. I had a lot of fun tonight.”
Sawalich, a Minnesota native who grew up racing other divisions at Elko, admitted his first ARCA Menards Series start at his home track was “a lot” to take in.
“I felt like it was almost two against one,” Sawalich said of his battles with Love and Hingorani. “But I held my own. Didn’t really feel like I raced too dirty. They got me a couple times, which I felt like they would get me back from Berlin. I don’t know why (Hingorani) would get me back. It’s not really his deal. It’s between me and (Love).”
Sawalich had one of the fastest cars on track, if not the best. He set the best lap time of the race at 14.577 seconds to prove as much.
Love, though, had the track position from the jump and the benefit of coming out on top of the continuous contact between himself and Sawalich.
He also benefited from the aid of an astute team effort.
“We unloaded today, and you know when you’re getting beat, and we were getting beat pretty bad,” Love said. “(Crew chief) Shannon (Rursch) just went to work. Fixed center first, then first race break we fixed the entry, and the next break we fixed the exit. I mean you can’t pay a guy enough to do that.
“Hats off to him.”
A couple of Love’s Venturini teammates, Hingorani and Conner Jones, finished third and fourth, respectively. Andres Perez de Lara finished in fifth.
Davey Callihan, Tony Cosentino, Willie Mullins, Toni Breidinger, and Christian Rose rounded out the top 10th.
After its pair of short-track shows at Berlin and Elko, the ARCA Menards Series gets a week off before returning to action on Friday, July 7 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.
ARCA Menards Series
Elko Speedway – Elko New Market, MN
Menards 250 – June 24, 2023
1. Jesse Love
2. William Sawalich
3. Sean Hingorani
4. Connor Jones
5. Andres Perez de Lara
6. Davey Callihan
7. Tony Cosentino
8. Willie Mullins
9. Toni Breidinger
10. Christian Rose
11. Jon Garrett
12. Ryan Roulette
13. Bryce Haugeberg
14. Rita Goulet
15. A.J. Moyer
16. Frankie Muniz
17. Casey Carden
18. Brad Smith
19. Jalen Mack
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