BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Physically, Jesse Love feels prepared to make his Cup Series debut at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon. The mental challenges, on the other hand, were a point of emphasis.
Love knew that going from 300 laps on Saturday to 500 laps on Sunday would test him in entirely new ways.
"It's going to be a challenge for sure on the mental side of it with how draining that'll be, but I feel like I've put the processes in place to be okay," Love said Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
How does one prepare for an extra 200 laps at the Last Great Colosseum? It's not like Love and Richard Childress Racing could just load up a Gen 7 car and head to Tennessee. NASCAR's rules don't allow for these opportunities.
The next best option, one that Love embraced, was the simulator. He spent hours and hours racing around the virtual short track in a Gen 7 car, both at home and at the GM Tech Center.
"I think I probably ran about probably 2,000 laps this week on the simulator, whether it be the DiL at the GM Tech Center or whether it be even iRacing with Scott Speed," Love said. "So just ran a lot of laps. Trying different things.
"One thing I did this week was I ran a couple 500-lap races by myself on iRacing, just to kind of condition myself to the mental drain it's going to take to run 500 laps. Obviously, it'll be the longest race in my life. Never ran a 24-hour race before, right? So this is going to be different for me in a lot of ways."
Of course, so much more goes into this weekend than running thousands of laps on the simulator. Love also had to alter his weekend schedule to accommodate the extra day of racing and the extra time behind the wheel.
The California native will stay on-site in an RV this weekend instead of driving back and forth to a hotel as he does the rest of the season. He will get an IV after the Xfinity Series race to help him recover before his Cup Series debut.
Will this prep work help him deliver a better performance during a 500-lap race at Bristol Motor Speedway? That answer remains unknown, but Love feels more prepared for the mental drain as he tries to achieve a straightforward goal.
"I think that I'm just focused on leaving the racetrack, having run all the laps and feeling like I did a good job," Love said. "And I think if I do that, then I can have a result that will really satisfy me and the team."