Connor Zilisch was undefeated on NASCAR Xfinity Series road courses entering Saturday’s (June 14) Chilango 150 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, and for most of the afternoon, it appeared he would keep the streak alive.
He won the pole (his third in three road course starts) earlier that morning, took control of the race in the middle stages and led the field to green for the start of the final stage with 19 laps to go.
The first three restarts of the race entering turn 1 were clean, but that was not the case for restart four. Ty Gibbs and Daniel Suarez had the advantage over Zilisch as the cars roared down the front straightaway, and there wasn’t enough room for all three of them to make the corner.
Zilisch entered the turn halfway through the inside grass and spun out. He made contact with Gibbs, and a cut tire on the No. 19 car led to a separate incident a few turns later that collected Carson Kvapil and Parker Retzlaff.
Both drivers had to restart at the back of the field, and Zilisch roared from 28th to eighth in just eight laps after the restart. A caution with seven to go gave him one more shot at the win, but it was too little, too late, as he had to settle for fifth at the checkered flag.
“Obviously, [the] finish isn’t what we wanted,” Zilisch told The CW. “We probably had a better car than fifth place, but we clawed back after the incident on that last restart.”
The No. 88 car had significant damage after the restart crash, and that likely impacted Zilisch’s forward progress in the four-lap shootout to the finish.
“I don’t know what I really could have done to get up to the front quicker,” Zilisch said. “I probably could have been a little cleaner after that restart and gotten by guys a little quicker. But yeah, I don’t think I had what the No. 9 (Suarez) and the No. 54 (Taylor Gray) had there at the end, but really proud to come back to finish top five after a day like that.”
With Zilisch and Gibbs out of the picture after combining to lead 37 of the first 46 laps, Suarez led the final 19 laps and never looked back, holding off Gray to score an electric win in front of his home crowd after starting dead last with a backup car.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf