Folks, for a young driver in NASCAR to make his debut at the highest level, is almost sacred. And they pick the track for it very carefully. How in 2023, Shane van Gisbergen, given all his Supercar experience, debuted at a road course (Chicago street race). And to everyone’s surprise, he ended up winning it! Similarly, even Connor Zilisch made his Cup debut this season and picked COTA, as he too has a certain prowess on road courses. But his run, unfortunately, ended in a DNF after he showed great pace for most of the race. So, there’s a lot that can go wrong, even on your favorite track. And now, Zilisch’s friend and ARCA rival is set to make his first Cup start, and he’s picked a tricky track. However, pole-winner Alex Bowman is confident in the debutant’s chances.
After the ‘track too tough to tame,’ NASCAR has landed at Bristol Motor Speedway. Now, if you are thinking that it’s just gonna be another Kyle Larson dominance, you are thinking of the fall race from last season. Where he led 462 out of 500 laps. But if you recall the 2024 spring race, you’d almost pity the youngster debuting. The tire fall-off was so high, teams went helter-skelter managing tire strategy. The race saw 54 lead changes; that’s massive. NASCAR, by the end of it, had to issue another set of tires to the teams just to finish the race. Now, making a debut in such a race can be tricky, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver thinks Richard Childress’ debutant now knows what to expect.
How would Jesse Love do at Bristol?
By the end of the Bristol race last year, it became a contest between Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. and, eventually, Hamlin took the checkered flag over his then JGR teammate. And Hamlin had credited his years of short track experience to tackle that extreme tire wear race. “That’s what I grew up here doing in the short tracks in the Mid Atlantic, South Boston, Martinsville. Once it became a tire management race, I really liked our chances. Obviously, the veteran in Martin, he knew how to do it as well. We just had a great car, great team. The pit crew just did a phenomenal job all day.”
Even Alex Bowman‘s #48 team figured out the tire strategy well; he ended up in P4 at the race after starting 29th. And this time, Bowman’s got the pole start, and he feels teams and drivers are going to be more prepared. He said, “Yeah, so, I think we all are much more prepared than we were last spring. Like we all saw it in practice last spring, and we are like it won’t be that way. We see that in practice at a lot of places. Martinsville, Dover, a lot of places you cord tires really quickly, and then it goes away in the race. Obviously, we found out quickly during the race that it wasn’t gonna be that way.”
And Bowman thinks Jesse Love, or any Xfinity guy, is more used to tires falling off, so it might not be that much of a surprise for him. And rather, Love’s got it easier than Cup guys last season. He feels Jesse Love knows what’s coming. “A guy like Jesse [Love] that hasn’t run a Cup car before, I feel like the Xfinity car has way more tire fall off, anyway. But when you have to be way more mindful of how you build the tires up on those cars, so I think he’ll be fine. [I’m] sure he watched the spring race as did everybody last year. So yeah, I think everybody knows how to approach it now, gonna try to manage the tires the best they can,” Bowman added.
Also, the Richard Childress Racing driver is the 2023 ARCA Series champion. And for the folks who don’t know, ARCA’s got a lot of short-track races in its schedule. So, if we go by Hamlin’s logic, Love’s all set. Love ran his first Xfinity season last year, where he managed to get a P4 in his debut Bristol race. Even this year, he got a P6 there. So clearly, Love knows how to tackle NASCAR’s fastest short track. The only challenge would probably be figuring out the Next-Gen car.
“I Think He’ll be just fine” – @Alex_Bowman confident about @jesselovejr1‘s Cup debut
: @tanner_marlar pic.twitter.com/JfIClVdm6F
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) April 12, 2025
Still, Love is not feeling it’s a daunting task to figure out the Cup car, as Bristol’s always been kind to him. “I’m comfortable with the race track and have enough laps here. I took enough detailed notes over the years. When I come here, I’m having to learn a whole new race car. I didn’t really get do any testing, right? So I can eliminate one of the factors of learning, which is learning the race track, right? Still picking up, you know, things here and there throughout the weekend, but because I’ve been here enough, I can come here for the Cup race and not have to learn a race track and a car at the same time.”
Love is banking on his Xfinity experience on that track and looking to translate that to Cup success. While this isn’t a surefire recipe for success, it gives him a solid shot at announcing himself on the biggest stage after a stellar Xfinity season so far. Love sits 3rd in the standings with 1 win at the season-opener at Daytona and has finished outside the top-10 just twice since (Martinsville and Darlington). He would look to ride this momentum into his Cup Series debut, and he has evidently put in a lot of time in preparation. He’s even picked Kyle Busch as his coach!
How is Love preparing for Bristol?
Look, you only get to debut once in the Cup Series, this moment won’t come again. And surely, Jesse Love would want it to be perfect. The first step for him was feeling it on the simulator. “I ran a lot of laps in the simulator. I think I probably ran about probably 2,000 laps this week on the simulator, whether it be the DiL at the GM Tech Center or whether it be even iRacing with Scott Speed. So just ran a lot of laps… trying different things. You know, one thing I did this week was I ran a couple 500-lap races by myself on iRacing, just to kind of condition myself to the mental drain it’s going to take to run 500 laps.”
But there is only so much that you can do on the sim. However, Love’s got a surprise weapon in his arsenal. How could he not use Bristol’s most successful driver, who also happens to be in the RCR camp? Busch is the winningest active driver of the track in the Cup Series. He’s won the race 8 times. And 22 times in his national series career. Twice getting a sweep on the Bristol weekend, in 2010 and 2017. Busch is also the only driver in NASCAR history to get a sweep. Yes, Rowdy hasn’t been that dominant there in the Next-Gen, but still, he’s loaded with experience when it comes to this track. And Love thought of taking advantage of it!
He said, “It’d be dumb of me to not go ask some questions and pick his [Kyle Busch’s] brain whenever I can. He’s been helpful, for sure, and I always feel like Kyle’s been an open book. I will say Kyle’s probably the toughest competitor in the garage. I do know it’s a little bit different, so I’m asking him questions when I’m not racing against him, but I am racing against him, right?”
What do you think, folks? How would Love fare in the upcoming race? He’s got a P19 start. But with the massive tire fall-off being in the picture, track position isn’t very crucial. Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
The post Alex Bowman Rallies Behind Richard Childress’ NASCAR Cup Series Debutant at Bristol appeared first on EssentiallySports.