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.
Zilisch accepts that adjusting to life in the Cup Series has been difficult. He summed it up on Denny Hamlin’s Actions Detrimental podcast.
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“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.
Drivers like Hamlin and Reddick, with race-winning cars underneath them, rarely fall out of contention unless something goes seriously wrong. They’ve had their share of bad luck too, 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, bad luck has only made an already difficult rookie season even tougher, making it harder to put together the consistent results needed to run at the front.
Zilisch 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.
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Many of those setbacks haven’t been due to a lack of speed, but to an inability to finish races. 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.
Zilisch’s struggles 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.
Meanwhile, Hamlin already has 14 top-10 finishes and four wins in 2026, while Reddick has matched those 14 top-10s and added five victories. Week after week, they’re in the mix no matter the track, showing the kind of consistency Zilisch says separates the Cup Series from the lower national series.
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Despite everything, the 20-year-old hasn’t let the setbacks define him. 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.
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