Richard Childress Racing celebrated their third big win in the Xfinity Series at Talladega, with Jesse Love taking the checkered flag. However, their Cup Series drivers couldn’t capitalize on strong starting positions, falling victim to half-throttle fuel-saving strategies and the Big One. At the end of a chaotic 188-lap Talladega duel, Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon only finished ahead of the DNF drivers and rookies at the 2024 GEICO 500.

With a rapidly evolving NASCAR canvas, the perceived excitement that follows superspeedway races like Talladega and Daytona has been declining rapidly. So much so that even RCR’s newest star, Jesse Love, has come forward to express his frustrations, but only from a true racing enthusiast’s valued perspective.

RCR rookie Jesse Love wins & intelligently rips on “Weird Form” of Superspeedway racing

The Cup Series race witnessed its share of unpredictable activity, ultimately falling victim to the precarious fuel mileage situations a little too prevalent of late at tracks 2.5 miles and above. And you guessed it right, the NextGen car takes much of the blame in discussions and debates surrounding the question: why do races not feel the way they did before 2022? Richard Childress’s rookie Talladega winner has his observations, as he made clear to the spotter cast of the unconventional podcast, Door Bumper Clear. 

Brett Griffin, a spotter for Richard Childress Racing’s third part-time Cup car fielding Austin Hill, and only the fourth representative of the hearty hosts involved in the making of DBC, announced that the #33 was absent this week at Talladega and would be making a return “two weeks later,” presumably in Kansas. The conversations also fell upon the sub-par excitement that the NASCAR community has been experiencing in the era of the NextGen car. 

With Talladega emerging as the most recent display of a seemingly debatable conversation, Griffin looked for Jesse Love’s opinion when he stated, “You went out, won the Xfinity Series race. You gained a ton of experience. If you put yourself in your shoes yesterday, and you were a rookie in that race there’s not a ton of opportunity for you to learn how to throw blocks, what the air is going to do, because you’re not racing 100% of the race…”

His guest agreed with Griffin’s observation, laying out his own as a spectator for the Cup Series race, “I mean, I don’t think Shane (van Gisbergen) learned a lot about how to go win a cup race yesterday.  He learned obviously, something about how to save fuel. But that’s just such a weird form of racing right now, and it sucks to watch because, they’re entertaining when you’re three wide, four wide is cool, but you know they’re not going to wreck. You know, which is a good thing that they’re not going to tear up stuff, but you know that they’re not driving 100%. And, as a fan. Because I was a fan yesterday watching the race was a frustrating part.”

Jesse Love added, “We qualified in the Xfinity Car. Single car draft, or single car run. Like 181, and they’re running 175, 179…”

Will NASCAR listen to calls for change in the NextGen era?

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Love and his full-time Xfinity Series teammate driving RCR’s #21 Chevy, Austin Hill, looked like strong contenders for a third triumph this season. Especially Hill, considering his strong records on drafting tracks, emphasized by three back-to-back Daytona 500 season-opening victories. Regardless, Love’s #2 car crossed the finish line first in a race that saw a blatant revival of the underdogs this Saturday. 

But as Hill steps into his third full-time season with Richard Childress Racing, the Georgia native already has eight race wins and over 55 top-10 finishes in just 96 races run in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. With part-time premier series starts already a momentary factor in Hill’s short career primarily driving the #21 Camaro, a full-time entry is only beaming on the horizon for the superspeedway specialist. But Love, who only earned his first-ever race win in the second tier this past Sunday, still has some time to reach his full potential behind one of the NextGen ZL1s

Still developing his skills both on-track, and off-track, Love also put out another mature opinion as he said, “And all it is, is a tug of war between the Top Lane, and bottom Lane sometimes. Leader can kind of go top bottom. But it’s just, I don’t know, I’m not educated enough to even comment on what they need to do to fix it. but it is frustrating to watch.”

Jesse Love’s opinions on DBC are proof, that it is not only veteran drivers or ordinary race fans pointing out a problem that has emerged in the last couple of years of NextGen racing. The proven winners and stars of tomorrow also see a decline in quality when viewing race weekend experience from the track or TV. With a growing number of influential entities voicing contrary opinions at increasing frequencies, when will NASCAR pay heed to all the outcry?