AUSTIN, Texas — Sitting dead last in NASCAR Cup Series points among full-time drivers entering Sunday’s (March 1) race at Circuit of the Americas, 19-year-old rookie phenom Connor Zilisch was looking for one clean day so that he could shine at the highest level with his greatest skillset of them all: road course racing.
He made his Cup debut at COTA a year ago, suffered a broken toe link on lap 1 and rebounded to 14th place at halfway, only to get wrecked and finish last. He was set to run the Cup race at Watkins Glen International last August, only to withdraw from the event after suffering a fall in O’Reilly Series victory lane the day before.
This weekend marked Zilisch’s second road course race in Cup, and he showed in his first that he was more than capable of contending for the win if luck was on his side.
But as has been the case in the majority of his Cup starts, it wasn’t.
Zilisch’s first misadventure was getting spun early in stage two by Daniel Suarez — the former driver of his car, no less — in turn 1 while running inside the top 10.
“Suarez was right behind me and just looked like he squared up and hit me,” Zilisch remarked.
That spin dropped Zilisch outside the top 30, but with 20 laps to go, he had stormed all the way back to fifth. He was even running the fastest laps on the racetrack and was one caution away from contending for the win.
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That caution became a reality by virtue of Ross Chastain’s runaway wheel, but the yellow flag also meant bunching up the field for another restart into treacherous turn 1. And lightning happened to strike twice, as Zilisch got spun from the top 10 for the second time, this time from a chain reaction of drivers on the inside lines running into drivers on the outside.
“Our Red Bull Chevrolet was really fast all day, and we’re putting ourselves in a spot there at the end on that last caution in stage three to go have a chance to win the race and got wrecked again in turn one,” Zilisch said. “So I don’t know if I need to do something different, but yeah, just one of those days.”
Not just one of those days, but one of those weekends. Zilisch was in the O’Reilly race the day before, dropped to 30th with a mid-race brake issue and climbed back to fourth only to get spun with three laps to go.
Zilisch had more time to recover from the second spin in the Cup race than he did from the spin in the O’Reilly race, as he once again managed to pass his way from outside the top 30 to wind up 14th at the checkered flag. Another solid rebound, but his race ended in another disappointing “what could’ve been.
“I feel like I drove one of the best races I’ve ever driven, and we finished 14th,” Zilisch said. “So yeah, it sucks.”
The one silver lining from Sunday is that Zilisch was fast enough to rebound not once but twice from misfortune. He’s already impressed with his speed and race craft on road courses as a Cup rookie; now it’s just a matter of him finding a four-leaf clover or two.
“It was good,” Zilisch said of his comebacks from the spins. “As a race car driver, I’m not satisfied, but I showed that I can do it.”
