Last year, Connor Zilisch won the Xfinity Series race in COTA, and logged a fourth place finish in the Truck Series on the same venue. But thee Cup Series proved to be a notch too difficult to replicate similar success in as Zilisch finished only 14th in Austin on Sunday. Still, it was commendable, as the teenager faced several setbacks in the three stages.
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Kyle Petty feels that Zilisch’s COTA run spoke volumes, arguing that the Trackhouse Racing driver stood out from the pack and showed signs that set him apart from drivers planning to come to Cup or simply transitioning. He said, “He (Zilisch) performed. He passed. He raced. He did everything that was expected of him. All the hype, everything we’ve heard, he showed he can do it.”
“He was out there doing it. And that’s all he had to do for me today to be a winner. He didn’t have to win the race. He didn’t have to run up front and lead a bunch of laps. He needed to show me, I think the way I looked at it was that I can be a play that, Zilisch can be a player, and he can be in the game,” he added.
Starting from 25th in the 95-lap event, Zilisch kept his head down and chipped away at the field, working his way into the top 20 during Stage 1. Yet on the restart to begin Stage 2 on lap 25, he was turned in Turn 1 by Daniel Suarez, sending him down the order to 37th.
Still, Zilisch did not throw in the towel. He rolled up his sleeves and went back to work, slicing through traffic and climbing into the top 10 within 20 laps of the spin. By the final stage, he had found his stride, clocking laps that placed him among the front runners and climbing as high as fourth.
During a restart with 17 laps left, however, trouble returned. Running fourth on lap 79, Zilisch was caught in a chain reaction in Turn 1. Contact from Zane Smith sent him around again. Smith had been shoved into the mess by a stack-up involving Denny Hamlin and William Byron.
The incident dropped Zilisch to the rear once more, yet he refused to wave the white flag. In the closing laps, he fought back and crossed the start/finish stripe to finish the race in the top 15.
The Cup garage has seen previous transition stories before. Drivers rise through the ranks, pile up wins in the Xfinity field, and arrive in Cup with momentum in their pocket. Yet many fade from sight once they rub fenders with the sport’s front line. Fans have watched drivers win seven or eight races in the season before moving up, only to vanish from the spotlight for seasons when facing the Cup pack.
Petty believes the 19-year-old driver could break that pattern. The driver has shown flashes of pace in early expeditions, including time near the front during races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and again at COTA.
