The 2020 ARCA Menards Series West season was all about Jesse Love, the 15-year-old rookie from Menlo Park, California, who won … well, everything there was to win for a driver in the series.
Love won the 2020 West Series championship by a healthy 25-point margin over second-place Blaine Perkins. The gap between love and his Bill McAnally Racing teammate Gracie Trotter for Bounty Rookie of the Year was even larger.
AWARDS:Â ARCA Menards Series Virtual Championship Celebration
On top of a championship in his first ARCA Menards Series West season, Love tied Perkins for the most race wins and led the series in laps led as well as General Tire Pole awards.
Which is why he swept the year-end awards for the West Series.
Valvoline Lap Leader Award: Jesse Love
Love led 369 of the 1,238 laps he ran in the 11 West races on the 2020 schedule, easily the most in the series.
Perkins finished second to Love with 282 laps led. Taylor Gray finished third in laps led with 188 despite running just five West races, and Sam Mayer was fourth with 138 laps led in two races.
As for the West regulars who finished third through fifth in the final series standings, Trotter led 95 laps in 2020. Fourth-place Trevor Huddleston led 20 laps, and fifth-place Gio Scelzi led 17 laps.
General Tire Victory Bonus: Jesse Love
Love and Perkins finished the 2020 ARCA Menards Series West season tied with three wins apiece, but Love won the General Tire Victory Bonus tiebreaker by virtue of finishing the year with more points.
After finishing second in the season-opener at The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, Love earned his first ARCA Menards win in the following race, the first of a June weekend doubleheader at the Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah. He led 23 of 31 laps in Race 1 en route to the victory and finished second to Perkins in Race 2 of the doubleheader.
The next time the ARCA Menards Series West was on track, Love was back in Victory Lane. His second win came on July 4 at Irwindale Speedway in Irwindale, California. He led 119 of 125 laps.
After a pair of top-five finishes, Love returned to Victory Lane for the third and final time in 2020 when he won at Colorado National Speedway in Erie, Colorado. He led 144 of the 153 laps that day.
General Tire Pole Award: Jesse Love
Two of the three aforementioned wins Love accumulated throughout the 2020 ARCA Menards Series West season came in part because he started on the General Tire Pole, an award he won a series-high four times this season.
Love’s first General Tire Pole of the year came at Irwindale, where his lap time of 18.059 seconds (99.673 mph) around the half-mile paved oval gave him the top spot over Huddleston. Love, of course, went on to win the race.
His next General Tire Pole came ahead of his next win, as his lap time of 16.214 seconds (83.261) around the 0.375-mile Colorado National Speedway earned him the No. 1 starting position over Trotter.
Love won the General Tire Pole again when the West Series returned to The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the second time in 2020, besting the field with a lap time of 14.941 seconds (90.355 mph) around the 0.375-mile oval.
His fourth and final General Tire Pole of the season came ahead of the West Series’ penultimate race at Kern County Raceway Park in Bakersfield, California. Love edged Taylor Gray with a lap time of 18.159 seconds (99.124 mph) around the half-mile paved oval in qualifying.
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