By AMANDA VINCENT
Reigning O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion Jesse Love repeated as winner of the Timberland Pro 200 on Saturday, winning the 2026 edition of the race in dominant fashion. It was his second win of the 2026 season and the fifth of his career. With the win, he took the championship points lead.
Sam Mayer finished second, 0.128 second behind Love, after starting the race in the back. JR Motorsports teammates Justin Allgaier and Sammy Smith put two JRM cars inside the top-five with third and fifth-place finishes. Corey Day was sandwiched between them in fourth.
“The 41 (Mayer) team did a great job going from the back and making their car better,” Love said. “Honestly, it felt like they were a little better than we were at the end. I was having to just drive a lot over the tire to make any sort of lap time. So I’ll yell at Danny (Stockman, crew chief) for not freeing me up more later, but it’s okay. I’m grateful to the good Lord above for putting great people behind me. I’m grateful to the other one for RCR, ECR. It’s been a tough year for us. I’m grateful to be in a situation to win races. I’ve got a great pit crew who just maul everybody on pit road every week. It makes my job a lot easier. I’m just proud of this whole group.”
Love led a race-high 156 laps of the 200-lap race. He lost the lead to Day on a lap-101 restart — just before a caution for Lavar Scott, Brennan Poole and Taylor Gray — but retook the top spot on lap 109.
Love, then, gave up the lead to pit under green-flag conditions on lap 154. The yellow flag interrupted the cycle of green-flag stops when Brennan Poole crashed on lap 160. When the cycle of pit stops completed during the caution, Love cycled back to the lead and Mayer second.
Love won the first 45-lap stage with Sheldon Creed in second.
Love started on the pole and led most of the opening stage. He lost the lead to Creed to a lap-32 restart but retook the position on lap 40. After stage one, Creed lost power and was pushed to pit road.
The first caution of the race came out for light rain on lap 23. Brandon Jones gave up the third position to pit for wet-weather tires. He went a lap down late in the stage.
“Certainly, it showed it was the wrong decision. He (crew chief Sam McCauley) sounded really confident in the decision,” Jones said. “We never even talked about if people stayed out in that aspect. I was kind of confused. I saw when pit road opened, everyone just stay out, and I kind of asked one more time if we were sure we were coming, and I think that confused him a little bit, and he said, ‘Absolutely’. I came down pit road and saw nobody came and knew it was going to be interesting, to say the least. It wasn’t a difficult decision; the easy choice was to just do what everyone else does from that standpoint. But there was a ton of rain, and it was still coming down, and I really couldn’t even see out of my windshield because of all the stuff that gets caked on the windshield, and I was no help from that aspect of it. It just put us behind the eight-ball with nobody coming.“
Love completed a stage sweep by winning the second 45-lap stage at lap 90. Allgaier was second at stage-end.
Allgaier took the lead on a lap-55 restart, but Love retook the position on lap 74.
Jones finished the race in the sixth position. Dean Thompson finished seventh, William Sawalich eighth, and JRM duo Rajah Caruth and Carson Kvapil rounded out the top-10.
