Connor Zilisch Stats: 10 Xfinity Wins, a Rough Cup Rookie Year, and the No. 48 Waiting in 2028
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one Cup Series driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 88.
The Short Version
Connor Zilisch stats tell two completely different stories depending on which season you look at. In 2025 he won 10 races in NASCAR's Xfinity Series and set a record nobody had touched in 43 years. In 2026, as a Cup Series rookie in the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, he has one top-10 finish and a pile of wrecked race cars. Then in August, Hendrick Motorsports handed him the keys to the No. 48 starting in 2028. He is 20 years old, and he is the most argued-about young driver in the sport.
From Go-Karts to Le Mans Prototypes
Connor Zilisch was born July 22, 2006, in Charlotte, North Carolina, the youngest of three kids. Athletic genes run in the family. His mother, Janice Kerr, raced up a different ladder entirely, competing for Canada's national gymnastics team at the 1983 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
Zilisch started in go-karts at age five. He won the Mini Rok World Championship in 2017 at South Garda, Italy, against more than 160 drivers from 33 countries. Three years later he became the first American ever to win the CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy. That is not the usual path for a NASCAR driver, and it shows up in how he drives.
He moved into cars through SCCA Spec Miata and won a 110,000-dollar Mazda MX-5 Cup scholarship in late 2021. Then came the part that made the racing world look up: in 2024, in his first attempt at each, he won the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring in the LMP2 class. Most drivers spend a career chasing one of those. He got both before he could legally rent a car.
The Xfinity Season That Rewrote the Record Book
Zilisch's stock car resume started with a statement. On September 14, 2024, he made his Xfinity Series debut at Watkins Glen in the JR Motorsports No. 88, won the pole, and won the race in overtime over Sheldon Creed. He became just the seventh driver in the history of the series to win on debut, and at 18 years, one month and 23 days, the second-youngest winner the series has ever had. He had won the ARCA race at the same track the day before.
Then he went full time in 2025 and put together one of the best seasons any young driver has ever run in NASCAR. In 32 starts he won 10 races, posted 20 top fives and 23 top 10s, took eight poles and led 1,013 laps. He won the regular-season championship, beating defending series champion Justin Allgaier by 53 points. He won four races in a row, tying a series record shared by Sam Ard from 1983 and Noah Gragson from 2022. He reeled off 18 straight top-five finishes, which no one in series history had ever done.
He reached 10 career Xfinity wins in 29 starts. Only Darrell Waltrip, who needed 24, ever got there faster. Zilisch won Rookie of the Year, and the one thing he did not win was the title. He finished third in the Championship Race at Phoenix and settled for runner-up in the standings behind his friend Jesse Love.
Connor Zilisch Stats at a Glance
Here is the career so far in the numbers that matter, from the karts through the 2026 Cup Series regular season.
The Rookie Season the Numbers Do Not Flatter
Trackhouse Racing promoted Zilisch to the Cup Series full time for 2026 in the No. 88 Chevrolet, with WeatherTech and Red Bull as his anchor partners. He lines up alongside Ross Chastain in the No. 1 and Shane van Gisbergen in the No. 97. His Cup debut had already happened the year before, at Circuit of the Americas in Trackhouse's No. 87.
Then reality showed up. Over the 26-race regular season Zilisch finished 34th in points with 271. He has no wins, no top fives, and exactly one top 10, a seventh at Sonoma on June 28. His average finish is 27.5. He finished outside the top 30 eleven times. He led eight laps all year, all of them at San Diego.
The reason is not speed. It is attrition. By New Hampshire on August 23 he had recorded nine DNFs in 25 starts. At Charlotte he completed 52 of 373 laps. At Nashville, 71 of 300. At Michigan he spun and backed it into the wall on lap three, the team patched it up, and he crashed again on lap nine. At Indianapolis he lost the right front after contact with his own teammate.
He has not hidden from any of it. "This sport will knock you down, but it's up to you to choose whether or not to stand back up," he said in early August. The gap between an Xfinity car and a Cup car is real, and he is living in it. He is still winning in the lower series when he shows up, including an O'Reilly Auto Parts Series victory at Watkins Glen this year.
Hendrick Motorsports and the No. 48
On Monday, August 17, 2026, in the middle of the worst stretch of his racing life, Hendrick Motorsports announced it had signed Zilisch to a multiyear deal to drive the No. 48 Chevrolet beginning in 2028, with Ally continuing as the primary sponsor. He replaces Alex Bowman, who announced he is stepping away from full-time racing after the 2027 season. Zilisch stays in the Trackhouse No. 88 through 2027 first.
We've got your number, @ConnorZilisch.
— Hendrick Motorsports (@TeamHendrick) August 17, 2026
The future arrives in 2028. pic.twitter.com/bCCudBjmLm
Rick Hendrick did not sign a stat line. "Connor is a truly gifted young racer," he said. "His talent behind the wheel is exceptional, but I'm even more impressed by the person he is." Zilisch called it "one of those moments you dream about as a kid," and said Hendrick "has always represented the standard in our sport."
That is the argument in a sentence. One camp looks at 34th in points and nine DNFs and says the hype ran ahead of the driver. The other looks at a kid who won on debut, took a record 18 straight top fives, and won two of the biggest sports car races in the world before he turned 18, and says the results will come.
The Bottom Line
Connor Zilisch's rookie Cup numbers are ugly and his talent is not in question, and both of those things are true at the same time. The team that has won more Cup championships than anyone looked at the same 2026 box scores you did and bet its most famous car number on him anyway.
Shop the Story
Rooting for the 88 or for the whole Trackhouse camp, here is what is in stock right now at Happy Hour Racing:
- Connor Zilisch No. 88 pewter blue number and signature hang tag keychain
- Trackhouse Racing rubber patch logo black delta snapback hat
- Shane van Gisbergen No. 97 2026 Watkins Glen winner T-shirt
- Ross Chastain No. 1 Trackhouse timber green shirt
- Ross Chastain Melon Man logo black mesh adjustable hat
Want to see what just landed, browse the newest arrivals here.
