Car: No. 88 (Cup) / No. 1 (O'Reilly Series) | Team: Trackhouse Racing / JR Motorsports | Manufacturer: Chevrolet
Status: Full-time Cup + part-time O'Reilly Series | Hometown: Weddington, North Carolina | Age: 19
Career Highlights
Connor Zilisch is one of the most hyped young talents in NASCAR history. The Weddington, North Carolina, native won 11 NASCAR Xfinity Series races in 2025 before graduating to the Cup Series full-time in 2026 with Trackhouse Racing, driving the No. 88 Chevrolet.
In addition to his Cup schedule, Zilisch competes part-time in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series with JR Motorsports, sharing the No. 1 Chevrolet with Carson Kvapil. On April 11, 2026, Zilisch won the Suburban Propane 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway — his 12th career O'Reilly Series victory and first of the 2026 season — after crew chief Rodney Childers made the call to stay out on old tires with 28 laps remaining while Kyle Larson pitted. At Texas on May 2, Zilisch won Stage 2 and led 48 laps before fading to 21st in the final segment after the car gave up whatever it had been giving him in the middle stages. He also was the third car in the Lap 105 three-wide moment with Kyle Larson and Brent Crews off Turn 4. At just 20 years old, Zilisch is already drawing comparisons to generational talents who made immediate impacts at the sport's highest level.
Background
A Charlotte-area native, Zilisch rose through karting and sports car racing before entering stock cars. His 11-win Xfinity season in 2025 was one of the most dominant campaigns by a driver under 20 in NASCAR history.
Zilisch finished fifth in the NASCAR All-Star Race at Dover Motor Speedway — the only rookie inside the top five. The race was won by Denny Hamlin from the pole. Read the recap.
Recent Coverage
Zilisch won the O'Reilly Series race at Watkins Glen (Race 13 of 2026), adding to his part-time JR Motorsports campaign.
Heim held off Christopher Bell by 0.287 seconds at Indianapolis and led more laps than anyone in the field. He is the defending Truck Series champion, declared for points in that series, and the official scoring report credits him with nothing in Cup.
Brandon Jones started 29th at Chicagoland, led 12 of 201 laps, and won the Cuervo 300 in overtime, the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series' first extra-lap finish of 2026. Chase Elliott and Connor Zilisch led 126 laps and won both stages between them. They left with zero points.
William Byron swept both stages at Chicagoland and led 94 laps, more than anyone else on the grid. He finished fourth. Chase Briscoe led the final 46 laps, beat Christopher Bell by 0.276 seconds, and gave Joe Gibbs Racing a 1-2-3 in NASCAR's first Cup race at the track since 2019.
Justin Allgaier has five wins, the points lead, and the best average finish in the O'Reilly Series. The one thing he hasn't done is win a road course, and Saturday's Pit Boss/FoodMaxx 250 at Sonoma is the last one of the season.
NASCAR and the Rolling Stones announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration this week: co-branded merch, two collector vinyl pressings of the new album Foreign Tongues, and a listening-lounge show car touring Chicago. It reads like a cash grab. The idea underneath it is real.
Justin Allgaier has already clinched the Chase, JR Motorsports has won 11 road races in a row, and the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series has never been more lopsided. This weekend it races a San Diego street course nobody has ever lapped, where all that homework counts for nothing. Saturday, 5 p.m. ET on the CW.
Denny Hamlin won the NASCAR All-Star Race from the pole at Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday, beat his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe in a side-by-side fight to the line, and became the third driver in the sport's history to win the All-Star at multiple tracks. Asked what he'd do with the $1 million check, he said he'd give it to his mother — a line that landed harder given his father's death in a December fire. The Cup field heads to Charlotte Motor Speedway next for the Coca-Cola 600.
Kaden Honeycutt won his first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race Friday at Watkins Glen — and did it by beating Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen, the two drivers who have dominated NASCAR road courses for two years. He also won the ARCA race at the same track earlier the same day, becoming the second driver in history to sweep both. Honeycutt now leads the Truck Series championship by 29 points.
The CW is running its Cup-driver guest-analyst rotation again for six O'Reilly Series races, and Denny Hamlin opens it at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Five more Cup drivers — Zilisch, Chastain, Allmendinger, Busch, Wallace — are booked behind him.
Corey Day won Talladega last Saturday by leading exactly one lap — the last one — for Hendrick Motorsports. Six days later, the same Concord-Mooresville pipeline runs at Texas, with Kyle Larson in the JR Motorsports No. 88, Connor Zilisch in the No. 1, and Austin Dillon in the Richard Childress No. 3. Three Cup drivers, the final Dash 4 Cash of 2026, and Justin Allgaier with a stage-points pace nobody has hit since Denny Hamlin in 2021.
Saturday night, Byron runs the No. 88 for JR Motorsports. Sunday afternoon, he's in the No. 24 for Hendrick Motorsports. Same Kansas weekend, same Charlotte story — thirty miles on either end of I-77.
JR Motorsports placed four entries in the top five at Bristol. The Mooresville operation's organizational depth — from Rodney Childers' strategy call to the talent corridor that feeds it — is the real story of the Suburban Propane 300.
William Sawalich won his first O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Rockingham Speedway on Saturday, becoming the youngest winner in track history in his 42nd career start. The nineteen-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing driver charged from 14th to lead 80 laps, outlasting Corey Day's dominant early effort that faded on tire wear.