Sammy Smith wins after NASCAR disqualifies Love at Rockingham

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. — ‘The Rock’ lived up to the name as a rocky finish to the NASCAR Xfinity Series race was decided hours after the checkered flag Saturday.

Jesse Love took the checkered flag after having both the best car and the best fuel saving to survive six laps of overtime after the scheduled 250-lap distance.

For about three hours, it was the third win of Love’s Xfinity Series career and first on a non-superspeedway track. Then, after post-race tech inspection uncovered an infraction with the rear suspension of Love’s car, NASCAR disqualified him from the race — handing the win to Sammy Smith.

Smith ended up being the one to claim the third Xfinity win and second on a non-superspeedway track. He took the lead for nine laps on a restart prior to the caution that set up the overtime restart.

Smith, Parker Retzlaff, Harrison Burton, Brennan Poole, Taylor Gray, Austin Hill, Josh Williams, Jeb Burton, Daniel Dye and Jeremy Clements were the top-10 finishers.

Justin Bonsignore, who crashed earlier in the race, was also disqualified for having too many loose lugnuts. He finished 38th, just behind Love. Each of them earned one point.

Love had earned five bonus points — one for running the fastest lap of the race and four stage points — before the inspection failure.

Ryan Sieg, who led a career-high and race-high 77 of 200 laps, picked up the bonus point for running the fastest lap after NASCAR disqualified Love.

Retzlaff and Jeb Burton earned the most points — 44. Burton earned the most stage points on the day — 15 — while Retzlaff earned nine stage points.

MORE: Rockingham leaves Ryan Sieg short again of first Xfinity win