Fans expected a lot from Connor Zilisch heading into 2026. Perhaps a bit too much, to be fair. His 10 race wins and runner-up finish in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series in 2025 helped him land a full-time Cup Series ride with Trackhouse as a teenager. But the bright lights of stock car racing’s premier series have quickly humbled him.
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Zilisch accepts that adjusting to life in the Cup Series has been difficult. He summed it up on Denny Hamlin’s Actions Detrimental podcast. With Hamlin away on vacation, Zilisch took the microphone alongside Todd Gilliland. Sitting near the bottom of the points list, the 20-year-old rookie admitted the Cup Series is a giant wake-up call.
“You don’t see guys like Denny [Hamlin] run outside the top 12 or [Tyler] Reddick or people who have been really good this year. Those guys are always inside the top 10 running well, but when you go from fifth on back, I mean, it’s just anybody can run well on any given week, and they don’t. That’s not a thing on Sundays,” Zilisch said.
The numbers prove him right. Veterans like Hamlin (four wins) and Reddick (five wins) fight for the lead every single week. However, they have had their share of bad luck too sometimes, especially Reddick, whose misfortune stalled what had been a red-hot start to the season and allowed Hamlin to overtake him for the No. 1 spot in the championship.
For Zilisch, though, it has been very tough.
He sits 34th in the championship standings. He is ahead of only Rick Ware Racing’s Cody Ware in the standings among the full-time drivers. Through the season, he has managed just one top-10 finish while suffering eight DNFs.
Many of those bad results come from terrible luck, not slow driving. He completed just 52 of 373 laps at Charlotte, 71 of 300 at Nashville, and only eight at Michigan before another early exit. Then, at Indianapolis, slight contact with teammate Ross Chastain damaged the right-front suspension, ending another race for him.
With all these crashes, it is easy to see why the young driver is putting so much pressure on himself. But his boss is not worried at all. Justin Marks wants to give him time to learn without the stress of winning right away.
“He’s probably coveted by everybody,” Marks told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio this week. “He’s a very talented driver. He’s a very smart young man. He has a big career in front of him, and for us, we are committed to Connor, and Connor is committed to us through the end of 2027.”
Marks added that 2028 is too far away to worry about right now. Their only goal today is to get him comfortable and to help him gain experience.
So, despite having a dominant season last year, why is he struggling in the Cup series? This is a normal rookie problem. Years ago, a young Joey Logano faced the same issue. Fans thought Logano was the best young driver ever in the lower series. But when Logano first moved to the Cup Series as a teenager, he had a hard time adjusting.
The cars in the lower series drive nothing like the new Cup Series car. The Cup car is very hard to control. It uses different tires that are much thinner on the sides. Because of this, if the tire loses its grip on the track, the car spins out fast with zero warning.
Learning to drive it is a huge challenge, even for a star.
However, Zilisch’s struggles are not just on him. They also show that Trackhouse Racing is having a challenging season. If only the No. 88 team were underperforming, it would be easy to blame Zilisch. But Ross Chastain has also had a quiet year, with just four top-10 finishes and a best result of third.
Only Shane van Gisbergen has been the bright spot, winning two races. But both of those came on road courses, where he has always excelled.
Thankfully, NASCAR might have just handed him a lifeline. The sport announced it will add more practice time for Cup Series races. This is huge for rookies who really need more time on the track.
“Getting to make changes in practice and get two sets of tires and be able to run more laps and have more time on track is certainly helpful for me,” Zilisch said.
Even with the bad luck, the young driver refuses to give up. Following a disappointing outing at Chicagoland Speedway on the 4th of July weekend, Connor Zilisch posted a simple but revealing message on social media.
“This sport will knock you down, but it’s up to you to choose whether or not to stand back up. Head down.”
For one of NASCAR’s brightest young prospects, that mindset may ultimately prove just as valuable as raw speed.