NASCAR’s Connor Zilisch Is Learning There’s More to Oval Racing Than Turning Left

Connor Zilisch grew up racing karts internationally, and at age 17 he possessed LMP2 class victories in IMSA’s Rolex 24 and the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Now he’s learning oval track racing, and it presents a different challenge.

“Growing up racing Go-Karts and my first few years racing in sports cars, ever bit of contact is penalized,” said Zilisch, who competed in his first oval race in June 2022. “You get into NASCAR and guys are moving you, you’re getting hit and bumped around a bunch, and that’s all new to me. I haven’t really experienced that before.

“Series that I’ve raced in we’ve had contact, but none of it’s been really egregious. I feel like in NASCAR guys can be egregious at times, and that’s one thing I’ve had to learn and deal with. I try to race people the way they race me. If someone’s gonna treat me with disrespect, I’ll do the same thing back to them.

“It doesn’t really change the way I process racing. It’s not like a completely different sport. At the end of the day, I’m still on four wheels trying to make something go fast.”

Zilisch, who signed a development driver contract with Trackhouse Racing before the 2024 season, has competed in a variety of series this year with different teams. In addition to his IMSA endurance race victories, he made his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut at Circuit of The Americas with a pole and a fourth-place finish.

He won all three of the ARCA Menards Series races in which he competed this season as well as an ARCA Menards Series East event. Earlier this year, still at age 17, he won the season-opening Trans Am TA2 Series race from the pole at Sebring, leading every lap. He also won a CARS Tour Late Model race at Hickory, North Carolina.

In September, Zilisch is scheduled to make his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut at Watkins Glen in a JR Motorsports Chevrolet, and in 2025 he will compete full-time for the Mooresville, N.C.-based team. Pairing Zilisch with JR Motorsports was an arrangement that Zilisch said had been in the works for “quite a few months.”

“I think our goal was to go to JR Motorsports. It wasn’t guaranteed and we looked at other options,” Zilisch said. “But at the end of the day, when you look at the Cup Series and the guys who have come through JR Motorsports and gone to the Cup Series, I feel like they have had the most success.

“I’m going to have to learn a lot and there’s going to be some growing pains … but there’s a lot of veterans, guys like Justin Allgaier … people in the series that have been there for a long time that I think I’m going to learn a lot from.”

The 2025 season will mark Zilisch’s first time competing full-time in a NASCAR series.