Love & Zilisch: Best Of Friends, Best Of Rivals

Connor Zilisch (left) with Jesse Love (center) in victory lane at Pocono Raceway. (Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images for NASCAR photo)

CONCORD, N.C. – Jesse Love and Connor Zilisch have brought a high level of camaraderie and humor to the NASCAR Xfinity Series garage this season, but now they’ll translate that to intensity as the run toward a championship begins.

The 20-year-old Love and 19-year-old Zilisch have a feel-good friendship that has made fans both laugh and tune in, not only to see the pair’s antics at the racetrack and on social media, but also to watch them battle for supremacy behind the wheel as two of stock car racing’s brightest young stars.

That balance and blend will be critical for both during the Xfinity Series playoffs, which kick off Friday night at Bristol Motor Speedway, but neither expects their longtime bond to change or be altered just because they’re battling against one another for a title.

“It’s easy to blend the two together, your outside friend life and your racing job, and it’s easy to forget that we are different people when we put our helmets on,” said Zilisch, a nine-time winner this season and the top-seeded driver starting the postseason, during Xfinity Series Playoff Media Day Tuesday. “But thankfully, I’ve got a great friend group, where we can go out and compete and be fierce competitors on the race track, and then come off the track and not treat each other how we do on the race track and be friendly. It is a hard balance, because you don’t want to wreck your friend and you don’t want to have incidents with friends of yours, but you just kind of have to expect it if you’re going to race around each other.

“If you’re going to be friends, you have to understand that on the other side of it, you’re going to have to race against each other, too. And [that because of that] some things could happen.”

Going back to Love’s early days trying to climb the racing ladder into NASCAR, when he was well-entrenched within the Toyota Racing Development program, the ‘California Kid’ first met Zilisch at Trackhouse Motorplex (then GoPro Motorplex).

The well-known go-karting facility in Mooresville, N.C., saw Zilisch serving as a karting and road-course coach for the younger TRD drivers at the time, and Love recalled Tuesday that his early stubbornness led him to tune out Zilisch’s advice at the time.

Respect for and friendship with Zilisch, Love admitted, came later.

“Him [coaching] the TRD drivers like me … on go-karting, it was maybe my second or third time there, and he came in and was telling me all these things I could do differently,” recalled Love, the sophomore Richard Childress Racing driver who won the Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway back in February. “And I was 14 or 15 then, and was like, ‘Who is this little two-foot-tall ginger trying to tell me how to drive a race car?’

“So I didn’t listen to him, and looking back on it now, I kind of wish I had,” he added. “I knew I liked Connor as a person, but I wasn’t developed enough yet as a human being to take advice well from other people. I’d just come from California and thought I had nothing to learn; I was very naïve in that regard and didn’t want to have anyone else’s opinion in my ear then. I’ve made a big swing from then to now.

“We got along then, and then basically began hanging out more and realized we like the same music, talk about the same things, have the same sense of humor, like the same foods … things like that. So yeah, we’ve obviously hit it off since.”

Years later, the duo finds themselves set to lock horns in pursuit of what would be both drivers’ first national NASCAR championship, though Love is a two-time titlist in the ARCA Menards Series West.

Zilisch comes into postseason action on a four-race win streak and a dominant rally that gave him the regular season title, while Love is fired up to end his 25-race, seven-month drought and put last year’s disappointment of missing the Championship 4 behind him.

Neither one, though, plans to let those factors alter how they treat each other off the racing surface.

Jesse Love (2) and Connor Zilisch at Talladega Superspeedway. (Jacob Seelman/Motorsports Hotspot photo)

“I don’t think the playoffs really will change too much,” affirmed Zilisch. “I obviously hope that we don’t have any run-ins, and we’re not battling for a transfer spot into the playoffs or anything like that. That could create some tension, but we don’t let what happens on the track affect our relationship and friendship off the track.

“It’s easy to forget sometimes, but it’s important for us to have each other to lean on off the track and have that friendship, but not let it get in the way of what we’re doing on the track.”

For Love, the motivation is to find ways to come out ahead of his best friend, considering Zilisch’s summer hot streak. The duo finished first and second at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway in mid-June, with Zilisch topping Love for his second win of the year at that point.

Love wants to reverse that, knowing that he’ll likely have to step up and win to get to the title decider at Arizona’s Phoenix Raceway in November.

“Does it suck getting beat by your friend? Yeah, it sucks,” Love admitted. “I’m not going to lie about that and say [that competitive frustration] doesn’t exist. It does exist. It isn’t fun [to lose]. I do wish I was on the other side of that coin right now. But I also know that my timing is what it is for a certain reason … so I’m not necessarily worried about it. It does motivate me to get better.

“I’ve definitely gotten better this year as a driver, as a leader and as an athlete, because Connor’s motivated me. I don’t want to be second fiddle to him,” Love continued. “That is something that gets my mood. It is something that bothers me and something that I’m not OK with, but at the same time, the mindset that I have to have to achieve my goal is to try and disassociate from the result a little bit and focus more on maximizing my day every weekend.”

And with Zilisch set for a full-time NASCAR Cup Series drive next season at Trackhouse Racing and Love on target to remain with RCR as a continued Xfinity Series favorite, both rising talents know that they expect to race one another – and support each other – for years to come.

“It’s the kind of bond you want to carry with you; he’s like a brother,” Love said of Zilisch. “We both want to beat each other, but at the same time, we do appreciate seeing each other succeed too from a friend standpoint.”

Love and Zilisch’s next battle will come in Friday night’s Food City 300 at Bristol, the postseason opener for the Xfinity Series and the second visit by the tour this year to The Last Great Colosseum.

Both drivers finished inside the top 12 in April, and both want to improve on those numbers when it matters even more.

Broadcast coverage kicks off Sept. 12 at 7:30 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.