FORT WORTH, Texas — In the race results of Saturday’s (May 2) NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, Connor Zilisch is listed as finishing 21st.
It’s a lackluster result for a driver who earned 10 wins in the same series a year earlier, but for the first 120 laps or so, he was one of the favorites to win in what was his very first start at the 1.5-mile circuit in his career.
“It was a good day up until that for our Chevrolet and cool to see [JR Motorsports] get another win,” Zilisch told Frontstretch. “Kyle [Larson], obviously very good at doing this kind of stuff, so cool to see him and Justin [Allgaier] race it out for the win.
“Wish I could have done it with them.”
Zilisch, Allgaier and Larson were the JRM trio that dominated the majority of the race in the Lone Star State on Saturday. Combined, the duo led a whopping 195 of 200 laps throughout the afternoon. Zilisch paced the field for 48 of those laps and won stage two.
Despite the dominant teamwork, the group still had its fair share of traded paint.
“Yeah, it was fun racing against those guys while we’re up there, obviously,” Zilisch said. “I enjoy racing against Justin. I raced against him a lot last year, and then, it’s always cool getting to race against Kyle. It was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately, things went south after that.”
Indeed, they did. After the field took the green for the final stage, Zilisch started to feel his No. 1 Chevrolet become tighter and tighter as the green flag period went on. With around 70 laps to go, he had fallen all the way outside of the top 10.
“Yeah, I was just really tight,” Zilisch recalled. “We put that set of tires on, and I don’t know, we didn’t change anything. We were tight the run prior, but we freed it up even more and we got even tighter that next run. I’m not sure what happened.”
Then, while he was reporting his tire chattering to his radio, his right front went down, and he had no choice but to pit off sequence.
“I was really tight, so when you’re that tight, those are the kinds of things you, you kind of expect to happen,” Zilisch said. “When it starts chattering like that and it’s getting really tight, you can’t go forever on that set of tires. It’s eventually going to give out.”
Zilisch rejoined the track two laps down and could only rebound one lap before it was said and done, narrowly missing out on the free pass position by one spot when the final caution waved. By the end, the No. 1 was the highest car a lap down in 21st.
The 19-year-old never made a start at the circuit up to then, as he missed last year’s O’Reilly race when he injured his lower back in a crash at Talladega Superspeedway. Despite that, he learned plenty for what will be his second ever start at the circuit when he takes the green flag in the NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday.
“I enjoyed it,” Zilisch said. “[The track] got wider than I expected it to down in [turns] 1 and 2 and especially [turns] 3 and 4.
“So, I enjoyed getting to figure that out and, just try and explore as much as I can before tomorrow.”
The Trackhouse Racing driver starts 12th on Sunday – the highest qualifying result of his Cup career thus far.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT
It is generally a mistake to attribute to someone that which has not been said.
Damn, I wish I could have seen Conor DOMINATE the race, cruising to a win until a tire went down. I was watching the O’Reilly race that took place in another dimension where nothing of the kind happened. Note to FS staff, get off of your knees…