Editor’s Note: Jesse Love, 14, is a rookie in the POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget League. From June 13 through June 17, Love will be sharing his experiences with SPEED SPORT subscribers while competing during Illinois Speed Week. 

Love drives the No. 97k Toyota-powered midget for Keith Kunz Motorsports. Below is his second diary entry, recapping Thursday night’s events at Fayette County Speedway in Brownstown, Ill.

BROWNSTOWN, Ill. – Hey guys, Jesse here, and it was definitely an interesting first night for us to open POWRi Illinois Speed Week at Fayette County Speedway.

The best way I can describe how I felt about everything was that we had a decent night at Fayette. I’m definitely not satisfied with the results we had, but I’m glad I learned some good lessons along the way.

We started fourth and finished fourth in a pretty stacked heat. It’s never easy when you have Cannon McIntosh on the pole and my teammate, Logan Seavey, coming from the back of the field at the start. I felt like we were solid, but we just didn’t have quite what we needed to move forward and that hurt us a little bit when it came to passing points.

Based on where we stacked up after heat races, we started on the pole in the semi feature – that’s what some other series call the B main. We knew we had to end up in the top six in that race, and we did what we needed to do to finish second in the semi.

Our semi finish put us starting 18th in the A feature. The tough part about the race was that the track went slick early and was hard to pass on, but it did have a nice curb and was a ton of fun to race on.

We ended up finishing 14th in my third race with the team. As a racer, I’m competitive and I always want more, but I can’t complain too badly about where we’re at right now at all. We lost a lot of track time early this year because of the weather, so really we’re still learning each other as a team and trying to figure out what we need in order to succeed.

Tonight marks the second race out of four this week, and I’m really looking forward to racing again at Jacksonville Speedway! The good news is that I’ve been there before, so I already know some of what to expect and some of how the track races.

We actually finished fifth there in an unsanctioned race we ran at Jacksonville a couple of weeks ago, starting eighth and having a shot for second late in the race. I feel like, if a couple things had gone differently, we might have even been able to fight for the win in that one, but it was still a great learning experience – even if we did flip there in hot laps!

All in all, I think we made a great go of it on Thursday and now we’ve got three more days to build on, so I’m ready to keep after it and I’ll see everyone at the race track!

Read Love’s prior entry at the link below:

Speed Week Diary: Jesse Love Raring To Go!