Jesse Love Outduels Sammy Smith in Overtime, Takes Rockingham Xfinity Series Victory

Jesse Love added his name to the list of winners at Rockingham Speedway on Saturday, passing Sammy Smith on an overtime restart to win the NASCAR Xfinity Series North Carolina Education Lottery 250 presented by Black's Tire.

RACE RESULTS: North Carolina Education Lottery 250

Smith led the field to the green flag for the lap 255 restart, with Taylor Gray lined up to his outside and Love in third. Love and Smith made contact in turn one, sending Smith up the race track in front of Gray and opening the door for Love to dart by for the lead and the win.

The 20-year-old driver from California now has three NASCAR Xfinity Series wins. However, this win left Love particularly excited, coming in the first NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Rockingham Speedway since 2004.

"These fans are amazing," said Love. "What an incredible racetrack. This is right in my alley. It's hammer-down and you've got to be in the gas good today.

"I don't know if I hit [Smith] or he stumbled. I know people are going to think it's because of Martinsville, but Sammy has never done nothing wrong with me. I just had to get it done. I couldn't really lose that one. We just had too good of a piece."

However, he already had his sights set on another potential victory celebration. Robert Strmiska, Love's car chief, is competing at Bowman Gray Stadium on Saturday night, and Love hopes Strmiska can also score a win on the weekend.

"We had it tough on pit road today with where our pit stall was located, who was coming around us. Our pit crew stayed cool, calm and collected. My car chief Bug is racing at Bowman Gray tonight, so we're going to haul ass over there and see if we can get another win."

The win is also an emotional one for Love, coming one year after the passing of his girlfriend's sister.

"My girlfriend's sister passed away about a year ago, yesterday. It's really sunny out today. She died of skin cancer less than two weeks after she found out. Go get your skin checked today, tomorrow, next week. It's something you want to get ahead of. This one's for Jessica. I'm glad that we could get to victory lane."

Smith held on for a second-place finish, and considered the final restart a product of hard racing for a historic win.

"That was good, hard racing right there," said Smith. "I ran him hard that first restart when I got the lead. Congrats to Jesse.

"We did a good job saving fuel on that long green-flag run to get us in position there to be there at the end. We had a good car all day. Thanks to everybody. All you can ask for is a good spot like that to be in for a shot at the end, and we did."

Love led six times for 53 laps on the day. Only Ryan Sieg led more laps, with 77 laps up front. Sieg and Love battled for the lead late in the race, but a caution on lap 228 bunched up the field and triggered a series of incidents and restarts caused by close-quarters racing and drivers running low on fuel.

Sieg suffered damage on a lap 241 restart pile-up and finished 19th.

Parker Retzlaff finished third after qualifying second, just one-thousandth of a second off the pole time set by Connor Zilisch. It was a battle throughout the day, but Retzlaff was pleased with a third-place result.

"I think it was a battle all day. We finished secondt here in stage one after staying out and biding our time. We buried ourselves a little bit for stage two, but we kept fighting. We fought and fought. In stage two, we had a right-front go down, just random, really just lost air.

"I thought that the 2 and 8 couldn't make it, so I thought we'd have a chance to make it there on the last lap. I thought maybe they were going to run out and I could get by them. Overall, it was a really good day and I'm happy with what we did today."

The next race for the NASCAR Xfinity Series is the Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, April 26. Coverage will be on The CW Network, the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

-Photo credit: Andrew Coppley, HHP for Chevy Racing