It’s not talked about enough how weird NASCAR scheduling has become in recent years, and with it has come a rough start for NASCAR Xfinity Series title favorite Connor Zilisch.
It wasn’t long ago that the top series in the sport would put months between its superspeedway races. Additionally, road course racing was typically preserved for the summer and fall and wasn’t featured so early in the year.
Flash forward to today, and the NASCAR Xfinity Series starts on a pair of superspeedways and a road course at Circuit of the Americas. And with a weird schedule comes some weird point standings.
Jeb Burton is fifth in the points heading to COTA ahead of cousin Harrison Burton, the only driver to finish in the top 10 at Daytona International Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway. The cutoff driver for the playoffs is Leland Honeyman, a part-time driver for the revived Cope Family Racing team. Honeyman won’t be in the race this weekend.
Equally as bizarre are those nowhere near the top of the standings, with none of the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers inside the top 12 in points. Kaulig Racing, a team that has previously performed well at superspeedways, has all three of its drivers sitting outside the top 18.
Then there’s the three betting favorites to win the Xfinity Series title in Justin Allgaier, Austin Hill and Zilisch.
Hill leads the points, with Allgaier eight points behind in fourth. Zilisch is 32nd.
The rookie has a pair of DNFs at Daytona and Atlanta, and it’s not because of rookie mistakes or mistakes by the team. It’s simply bad breaks: a stack up from fifth with three laps to go at Daytona that sent him into the wall and a spin by Sam Mayer that tore the right side of his car open at Atlanta.
Now, Zilisch has an uphill climb to get anywhere close to the top of the points. His attempt to escape the bottom of the standings will begin on the most high pressure weekend of his NASCAR career so far.
For starters, Circuit of the Americas provides easily one of the best opportunities for Zilisch to win his second career Xfinity Series race and possibly lock up a spot in the playoffs. To do that however, he has to be what he was last September at Watkins Glen International: Perfect. Never over the course of qualifying or the race did Zilisch put himself in a bad spot or a dangerous spot, because he kept himself out front.
At previous road course races, one mistake isn’t a nail in the coffin for your day. But, as Zilisch learned at his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut last year at COTA, they make getting good results multiple times harder.
While Zilisch is easily the driver highest on everyone’s radar, he’s far from alone in terms of favorites for the Xfinity race. Hill has a pair of runner-up finishes at COTA. William Byron will be driving a Hendrick Motorsports entry that’s always a factor at road courses. Former COTA winners like Ross Chastain (in Cup) and Corey Heim (in Trucks) are also making one-off starts.
All that said, the Xfinity race isn’t even the biggest part of Zilisch’s weekend. On Sunday, March 2, Zilisch will make his Cup Series debut for Trackhouse Racing with Red Bull sponsoring the car. And he’s a favorite to win in his debut. Again.
Zilisch has a chance to make history and be the first driver to ever win their Cup and Xfinity debut. He can also become the youngest winner in Cup history at a little over three months shy of his 19th birthday.
It was an incredible feat when Shane van Gisbergen won in his Cup debut at the Chicago Street Course two years ago, but consider this: SVG started racing in 1998, a year before Tony Stewart started racing in the Cup Series. Zilisch started racing in 2011, when the then 13-year vet Stewart won his final Cup championship.
With that much of a head start on his road racing career, SVG is still only slightly favored by sportsbooks this weekend against a debuting 18-year-old. Oh, and then there’s a whole field full of series champions and road course winners behind them.
You think the oddsmakers are putting a lot of pressure on Zilisch? You haven’t heard what Zilisch himself says on what he wants to do Sunday.
“I want to try and become the youngest Cup Series winner, and to do that, I have to race as soon as possible and get it in before I turn 19 [years old],” Zilisch told NASCAR.com on Tuesday (Feb. 25). “I wanted to at least give myself a shot at that. So that was definitely part of my thinking. And honestly, I don’t feel like there’s anything that tells me that I’m not ready to race on a road course on Sunday.”
It’s an interesting conundrum for Zilisch. If he manages to win Sunday, he may as well check the final box he needs to go Cup racing full time and dominate the series until he retires.
But what about Saturday? How does he balance the expectations he has set for himself on Sunday with the near-alarm-sounding situation he’s in on Saturday if something goes wrong and he finds himself buried in the standings?
With all the elements at play — his meteoric rise, his rough start to 2025, the history at stake, the expectations in both rides — anything short of leaving this weekend with two wins would be a letdown for Zilisch.
It’s blunt and harsh, and it’s expectations I wouldn’t have wanted on myself when I was 18 years old. But it’s the reality of what’s possible this weekend. It’s either sports history or the first major setback for the next big thing.
James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a local sports reporter, including local short track racing. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.