Jesse Love walked into the Australian Supercars paddock riding the high of a dream season. After winning the 2025 NASCAR O’Reilly Series championship, the 20-year-old phenom arrived in Adelaide ready to test himself against an entirely different kind of chaos in the Super2 series. He’d studied the cars, watched the races, and talked to the veterans. He thought he knew what was coming.

But the moment he strapped into the Image Racing No. 57 machine, reality was a lot tougher than he imagined. What was supposed to be a fun off-season challenge quickly turned into a humbling lesson, leading to a handful of words that summed up his entire weekend.

Jesse Love’s eye-opening Supercars reality check

“Good day, finally. Learned so much this weekend thanks to Image racing, Whelen, and RCR. Honestly, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, and it was way harder than I expected,” said Love. “The whole field is so good at what they do, and they all taught me so much this weekend. Cheers.”

With that candid reflection, Jesse Love summed up a weekend that humbled him, tested him, and ultimately sharpened his respect for Australia’s Supercars landscape. Entering Adelaide, the newly crowned NASCAR O’Reilly Series champion wasn’t just being watched. Instead, he was being measured.

Many believed the 20-year-old’s raw pace and momentum would make him an immediate factor in his Dunlop Super2 Series debut. And early signs looked promising as he locked in 19th on the grid for Race 1, a respectable starting point for someone tackling a new car, new track, and new racing culture.

But motorsport has a way of teaching the harshest lessons at the worst possible time.

Just two laps into the November 29 main event, Jesse Love’s debut unraveled. A sudden mechanical issue forced the Image Racing No. 10 entry onto pit road, killing any chance of building rhythm or learning racecraft in real time. By the time his team diagnosed the problem, the leaders were already storming away, and Love’s afternoon had shifted from competition to survival.

He eventually rejoined the race, but the deficit was insurmountable. Supercars’ classification rules demand a minimum lap completion percentage, and Jesse Love fell short. This left him officially marked as NC (Not Classified). He wasn’t alone on that list, joining Cameron McLeod, Cody Gillis, and Max Geoghegan, who also failed to meet the race-distance threshold.

For a young driver who has mastered nearly everything thrown at him in NASCAR so far, this was a sobering reminder: Supercars is a different beast, one that doesn’t care about résumés or recent championships.

Love’s praise for mentor Broc Feeney

As Jesse Love continued navigating the steep learning curve of his Super2 debut, he shed light on an unexpected and impressive source of guidance. While discussing Supercars’ new playoff-style “Grand Final” format, Love casually revealed that one of the series’ brightest rising stars has been lending him advice behind the scenes.

“When you have a winner-take-all format, it’s so difficult,” Love said on Supercars’ YouTube channel. “It’s so hard, and there’s so much pressure on your shoulders. And again, these guys are all professionals, right? So they’re all going to manage it the right way.”

Then came the surprise.

“Broc Feeney has actually helped me quite a bit leading up to this event, and just kind of debriefing with him yesterday. Those guys are so helpful to me. So, yeah, I’m pulling for Broc, hoping he can get it done. Like I said, there’s no room for error here because it’s a concrete wall street course. You put that and then all the stress and the pressure, it’s a perfect little pressure cooker for sure.”

Jesse Love’s praise wasn’t just polite. It highlighted how much support he’s needed to adapt. Despite being an accomplished road course racer with top-10 finishes at COTA, Chicago, and Portland this past NASCAR season, Super2 has presented a completely different challenge. In Adelaide, everything was new: the car, the track, the racecraft style, even the side of the car he needed to focus on while driving.

Keeping up with the leaders was always going to take time. However, having someone like Feeney in his corner makes that transition a little less overwhelming.