Connor Zilisch won again, again and denied William Sawalich a NASCAR Xfinity Series playoff spot in the process.
Why again, again?
The victory in the Nu Way 200 was the ninth credited to Zilisch this season. His fourth credited win in a row and eighth credited over his past 10 races. Credited because he started the race at Daytona, immediately came down pit road to swap out with Parker Kligerman, who went on to win the race.
That was a result of trying to avoid doing damage to his surgically repaired collarbone after his Watkins Glen victory lane spill but nevertheless Zilisch is shown as the winner of that race too.
Kyle Busch holds the record for the most Xfinity Series wins in a single season, with 13 wins in 2010, and there are eight more races to go.
“Yeah, I’m not chasing records but I show up to the track every week and want to win,” Zilisch said. “So yeah, I hope I get to 13 but it’s not like my season’s going to be a disaster if I don’t get there. I don’t really look at those things.
“It’s cool to get those records and accolades but at the end of the day, I just show up and I’m just a race car driver who wants to race and win. That’s my biggest focus.”
Playoffs set
William Sawalich got two shots at Zilisch on restarts late in the race, and despite a summer surge, the Joe Gibbs Racing rookie missed the playoffs due to a dreadful spring getting acclimated to these cars.
For the past eight races, Sawalich has been a fixture in the top-10 but spent practically every race prior to that racing outside of the top-20. It’s a potential sign of things to come even if not being able to win his way in was a disappointment upon climbing out of the car.
“The start of the year was definitely rough,” Sawalich said. “There is no doubt about that. It just goes to show how we can bounce back as a team over the summer.”
All told, Sawalich was proud of the effort at Gateway.
“I did all I could to race cleanly,” Sawalich said. “We gave our best effort as a team and our pit crew was phenomenal and we had a good car.”
Facing similar must-win odds, Kaulig Racing’s Christian Eckes also came up just short with a third-place finish, and wanting just one more restart.
“I felt like we had a race-winning car, and with a restart, who knows what could happen,” Eckes said. “Disappointing not to get this team in the playoffs. They deserve being in the playoffs, but just about seven too many DNFs and a lot of problems.
“We knew we had to come here and win. We didn’t achieve that, so it is what it is, and we move on.”
With no new winner, Harrison Burton claimed the final playoff spot over cousin Jeb Burton, who crashed earlier in the race. Harrison had his own issues, getting spun off the nose off Brennan Poole, and had to accept a 22nd place finish – albeit one that was enough for the big picture.
“I’m disappointed,” the younger Burton said. “I am happy about our season, happy about the progress of our team, a single-car team and the effort, all the hours, a lot of good people. Now that we’re in, I saw that we’re only two or three points out of the cutline.
“It’s all about execution now. We got our mulligan tonight. Now we can go to haul the mail the playoffs.”
Was he aware that Sawalich and Eckes were threatening to win and boot him out?
“Pretty aware,” Burton said. “I was looking at the leader board. We had used tires because of our spin, so I wasn’t racing anyone, and frankly spent a lot of time watching the battle for the win there at the end.
“Like, I said, we left it up to chance and got lucky and now we can’t do that. We have to earn our way into the next round and the round after that.”
Playoff grid
Connor Zilisch +59
Justin Allgaier +30
Sam Mayer +11
Jesse Love +8
Brandon Jones +8
Sammy Smith +4
Nick Sanchez +1
Taylor Gray +0
—
Carson Kvapil -0
Sheldon Creed -2
Harrison Burton -3
Austin Hill -5
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