When it comes to Connor Zilisch, it’s the same old story. He dominated at Gateway, leading the most laps, and secured the Xfinity Series victory despite the best efforts of the field.
But if it’s a tired story it’s because Zilisch has just done it time after time in one of the most dominant seasons in any level of NASCAR in memory. The win at Gateway is his fourth in a row and ninth in the season, the most of any Xfinity Series rookie ever.
“Man, this is going to be tough to keep up,” Zilisch said after getting out of his car on the frontstretch. “Honestly, you know, it’s rare that you can go on a run like this. Every week I show up thinking, ‘man, this is going to be the weekend that we just go run eighth and just aren’t great.’ But every weekend we show up and we’re a winning racecar.”
With the win, Zilisch secured the regular season championship by 53 points over Justin Allgaier. Despite having six more wins, the battle came down to the final race of the regular season since Zilisch had one fewer to race to count: a back injury at Talladega kept him out of the car at Texas.
Allgaier proved Zilisch’s toughest competition in the early stages of the race. The pair swapped as Zilisch won Stage 1 and Allgaier won Stage 2. The pit stops after the second stage proved fateful, however, as Allgaier picked up a speeding penalty and was sent to the tail end of the field. He struggled to recover before being caught up in a late wreck, ultimately finishing 28th.
That gave Zilisch clear air for the regular season title but not for the race itself. While he grabbed the lead back in the final stage after making adjustments on the pitstop and was the class of the field. However, a series of restarts meant getting the win would have to be a fight.
The final proved the most difficult. Zilisch tried to wait until the end of the restart zone to start to try to surprise his competition, but William Sawalich accelerated anyway and gave him a shot from the back. That shot him to the left and into the side of Aric Almirola, and Zilisch and Almirola ran side-by-side into Turn 1 before Zilisch could finally clear for the lead.
From there, Zilisch finally drove away for good, ending with a 1.506-second gap over William Sawalich and leading 121 of 160 laps.
“Yeah, that one was stressful,” Zilisch admitted of the final restart. “Man, that’s awesome. Four in a row, I think that’s seven of the last eight for our WeatherTech Chevrolet team. Thank you to WeatherTech.
“It’s my mom’s birthday today, so happy birthday mom, I love you. And, yeah, man, that’s awesome. A lot of fans here. It’s awesome to come here to St Louis and then bring the Xfinity Series back here, so thank you guys for showing out tonight, and that’s awesome.
“We’re going to celebrate this and the regular season championship.”
William Sawalich ended up second for the second time in two weeks. He acknowledged that he didn’t have the pace to chase down Zilisch in that final stint, but said that the strong performance in the last two races is a big step in his rookie season after struggling early in the year.
“Yeah, I mean, the start of the year was definitely rough, there’s no doubt about that,” Sawalich admitted. “But it just shows how we can bounce back as a team and get ourselves together.”
He said that he’s had to work on his racecraft throughout the season to get to this point.
“It’s mainly me,” he explained. “The car has always been there for me, we’ve always had pace. Just for me to figure some stuff out, gain some confidence back. We still have the mile-and-a-halfs to get better at and everything else will follow suit.”
Christian Eckes, Brandon Jones, and Jesse Love rounded out the top five.
Aric Almirola, Daniel Henric, Parker Retzlaff, Corey Day, and Daniel Dye all earned top ten finishes.
As the final race of the regular season, the race set the Xfinity Series Playoff grid. Harrison Burton earned the final spot on points over cousin Jeb.
“Not fun,” Harrison described the experience of racing a cousin. “Hopefully he lets me go a little now that he’s knocked out. It’s been interesting trying to race him clean but hard, and know that we’re going to have to go to Thanksgiving dinner at some point together.
“So I’m glad that that’s over and we can kind of go about the Playoffs and hopefully we’ll go back to how we were before it got real tight for us on the cutline.”
The Xfinity Series returns for the Playoff opener on Friday, September 12th at Bristol Motor Speedway.
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