Sammy Smith makes his feelings known on Rockingham victory post Jesse Love's disqualification
NASCAR stripped Jesse Love of his most recent win at Rockingham Speedway and gave it to Sammy Smith instead. Pleasantly surprised, Smith opened up on the same during an interview with FOX journalist `Bob Pockrass.
Sammy Smith originally finished as the runner-up behind Love, who was ecstatic after bagging his second win of the 2025 season. However, during post-race inspection, it was found that Love’s No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevy had issues pertaining to the rear suspension.
After being announced as the final winner, Sammy Smith told Pockrass,
“It's cool you know...it's tough to kind of win 'em like that. It's unfortunate, I've been on the other end of the stick where Jesse's at, but it's take 'em how you get 'em I guess.”
All of this happened more than two hours after the checkered flag was waved at Rockingham on Saturday, April 19. As per NASCAR, “all mating surfaces between the truck trailing arm and the U-bolt saddle must be in complete contact with each other.”
Love’s car did not meet the post-race requirements. The DQ left him with a P37 finish, which his team can appeal before NASCAR heads towards Talladega Superspeedway for its next race, the Ag-Pro 300 scheduled for April 26.
Besides Jesse Love, NASCAR disqualified Justin Bonsignore as his car did not have three nuts installed in a “safe and secured manner”, and handed him a P38 finish. Bonsignore, a native of Holtsville, New York, drives the No. 19 part-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Joe Gibbs Racing.
JR Motorsports driver Sammy Smith reflects on getting help to bear “some personal expenses”
Sammy Smith, driver of the No. 8 JR Motorsports Chevy, didn’t need to win the race to bag a whopping $100,000 from the Dash4Cash at Rockingham Speedway. After winning the cash prize, he took to X (formerly known as Twitter) and wrote,
“P2 at the line and grabbed $100K in the Dash4Cash! Glad to have the help offsetting some personal expenses. Thanks for another great ride @JRMotorsports @PilotFlyingJ.”
Despite the nature of the win, it marked Sammy Smith’s first win of the 2025 season. As of now, the 20-year-old speedster sits eighth in the driver standings with 281 points to his name. Jesse Love, on the other hand, is fourth with 287 points.
Needless to say, Love wasn’t happy with how things turned out for him.
“Good thing my house has a safe,” Love wrote on X, hinting that he was not going to let his trophy be taken away.
Had Love not been disqualified, it would have marked the RCR icon’s first win at a non-superspeedway in 43 career starts. The DQ also took away Love's chance at logging a back-to-back sweep in next week's race at Talladega Superspeedway.