Give it hell: Love's steely focus for homecoming
Aaron Love to make first main game starts in Perth
BRT rookie on the up after P12 in Melbourne, P15 in Taupō
Love from same Perth kart club as Garth Tander, Daniel Ricciardo
Aaron Love is making no secret of a challenging start to life in the main game, but is determined to “give it hell” in front of friends and family in Perth.
The Blanchard Racing Team rookie will become the latest Perth product to race on home soil, following the likes of fellow Tiger Kart Club graduates Garth Tander and Brodie Kostecki.
The second-generation racer is partnered by 2010 champion James Courtney, who after three rounds in BRT colours, has a best race finish of eighth in Melbourne.
Love, conversely, endured a baptism of fire in Supercars, crashing twice on debut at the season-opening Thrifty Bathurst 500.
However, the 22-year-old quickly bounced back with a best of 12th in Melbourne, and survived a torrid wet race in New Zealand to come home 15th.
“Obviously it's no secret Bathurst didn't go the way we wanted it to go,” Love told Supercars.com.
“It was quite tough coming out of that weekend. But, all you want to do is go well at the next round, and we did that at the Grand Prix.
“We finished off relatively strong from where we started in the weekend. We definitely moved forward every day. With that, it was nice to be able to get that racing experience under my belt, which I didn’t get in Bathurst.
“Taupō was solid — we got an okay result on the Saturday in the wet, which was nice. But it was a bit frustrating because, while we finished 15th, we could have finished further up.
“Sometimes strategies don't play out, and I made a few mistakes. While we didn't throw the race away, we just didn’t quite maximise. However, Sunday was tough in the dry. We didn’t have the car speed.
“The positive is that the team learned a lot, and took heaps out of the weekend as to what we did wrong, and what we can improve in Perth.”
Love, the son of Western Australian racer lan and younger sibling of rising star Jordan, finished on the round podium at last year’s Dunlop Series round at CARCO.com.au Raceway.
He started karting at six years of age, and made his circuit racing debut six years later in Wanneroo's Formula 1000 class – at the same circuit he will race at next weekend.
Love’s formative rounds in Supercars have exposed the young driver to the highs and lows of the sport, but despite the rollercoaster, he believes BRT has the right culture in place to succeed.
“As frustrating as it was, it was still nice to see, at the end of the day, everyone can crack a smile, have a joke, and still say they had a fun weekend away racing,” Love said.
“In the past, I've experienced times when you have a bad weekend, and there's people pointing fingers at everyone, there's yelling and screaming, and it's just no fun for anyone at all. Those environments make you question why you go racing.
“So, the fact that we were able to put the tools down and go, 'Hey, it was a pretty bad day, but let's just go and have a nice night together and relax and then regroup on Monday, and try and put it all back together for Perth.'
“No one likes the misery of uncertainty, we will put our best foot forward, do as much preparation as we can, see where we roll out of practice, and give it hell."
The season will resume in Perth on May 17-19. Tickets for the Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint are on sale now.
International viewers can follow all the action on Superview.
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