Debut seasons can get rough, but 34th in points and 9 DNFs are just indications of how bad the 2026 season has been for Trackhouse Racing’s rookie Connor Zilisch. Especially for a 20-year-old who only transitioned to Oval racing in 2022. Zilisch is second-to-last in points amongst drivers who drove in the Cup Series full-time, with only Cody Ware behind him.
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The Trackhouse No. 88 Chevrolet driver was in conversation with Jeff Gluck recently and opened up about how he has been tackling this rough season from a mental side of things. How Zilisch has been tackling the self-doubt and balancing it out with understanding that he still has a long way to go and things may not always be in his control.
“There’s obviously self-doubt. At the end of the day, I’m human,” said Zilisch to Gluck. “When I don’t run well, it frustrates me. It’s tough at times. But the biggest thing is I compare myself to my teammates. I know Ross(Chastain) is a championship driver when everything around him is the way it needs to be. We’ve seen that before. So he’s a really good one for me to go off of — and he still outruns me almost every week.”
“I’m honest with myself in that regard that I can still be better,” Zilisch added. “At the end of the day, you have to find ways to measure yourself, and I think that’s the best way to do it. Until I’m at the point where I’m consistently running around or outrunning him and Shane(van Gisbergen), I can’t complain too much because I know I still have a job to do. That’s important to me.”
Zilisch wasn’t the only Trackhouse driver to struggle in 2026. His teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Ross Chastain both didn’t make the cut for the Chase. SVG finished 17th despite his wins at Watkins Glen and Sonoma, while Chastain is 19th in what has been a dismal season for someone deemed a championship driver.
Zilisch 2026 season breakdown
Zilisch is currently down in 34th in the standings, and what’s worse, when you look at his season, you see that he has more DNFs this season — nine to laps led, which he has 8.
The Trackhouse No. 88 only made it to the top ten twice: the first time in Sonoma when Zilisch’s teammate Shane van Gisbergen won the race, and the second time was at Gateway during the second Chase race, during a chaotic 18-caution race that saw multiple brake rotors end races for drivers.
Apart from his two top-ten finishes, Zilisch finished in the top 20 on five different occasions. A 14th-place finish at the Circuit of the Americas, 18th in Darlington during the regular season race, 16th in Texas, 20th at Watkins Glen, and 11th in Iowa.
All combined, Zilisch has seven top-20 finishes, still two less than the number of DNFs he’s faced this season.
Zilisch DNFed at Echopark Speedway before another followed soon after at Phoenix Raceway. Before long, he had a stretch of DNFs with Charlotte, Nashville, Michigan, San Diego, and Chicagoland, which came back-to-back, apart from a top-ten finish at Sonoma between San Diego and Chicagoland. He also DNFed at the Brickyard in Indianapolis as well as New Hampshire.
Sometimes caution, sometimes execution, and sometimes issues beyond his control, Zilisch has mostly seen his luck go against him this season in the Cup Series.
But he has been showing that he hasn’t lost his winning ability completely, with wins at Bristol and Watkins Glen in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series as well as a second-place finish at Sonoma in the second-tier series. In the Truck Series too, he has managed positive results with a second-place finish at Watkins Glen and a third-place finish in Charlotte.
Unfortunately for the 20-year-old Red Bull athlete, his best Cup finish didn’t count for anything. In the All-Star race, which isn’t a points-paying race, Zilisch finished 5th.
But Zilisch is still confident that he belongs at the very top in NASCAR. Luckily for him, it’s not just him, but also the confidence from his next team to trust him with a major contract, that should make the youngster believe that he belongs where he is currently.
Despite all the ups and downs this season at Trackhouse Racing, Zilisch already has plans drawn up for 2028. He will be replacing a retiring Alex Bowman in the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
As someone who grew up karting in Europe aiming to make it big in open-wheel racing, Zilisch wasn’t always a NASCAR fan, but he did pay attention to the sport. And when he was asked which driver he idolized, his answer was that of seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson.
Johnson won all seven of his Cup titles in the No. 48 HMS, and Zilisch will be driving that very car from 2028 onwards. So despite all the downs of what is possibly the roughest rookie year in the Cup Series, Zilisch has clear targets ahead of him.
The first target would be to end this season on a positive note, and the second one would be to use the next year at Trackhouse to pay back the faith the organization has shown in him, as well as use the season as a stepping stone to enter Hendrick Motorsports fully equipped to succeed from the get-go in 2028.