NASCAR Veteran Calls Out Connor Zilisch’s Immaturity Despite Ross Chastain Showing the Way

After winning the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Bristol in April, by beating a Kyle Larson car that had led 230 of 300 laps, Connor Zilisch told the broadcast: “It’s been a tough past two weeks for me in the Cup Series, and it feels good to come back down here into the O’Reilly Series and prove that I can still do it.” But six weeks later, he has three consecutive DNFs, three consecutive last-place finishes, and just 15% of laps completed across the last three weekends in the Cup Series. 

The criticism that followed came from inside the garage. On the Door Bumper Clear podcast, veteran crew chief and former Cup team owner Tommy Baldwin Jr. and guest Bubba Wallace used Zilisch’s own teammate Ross Chastain to make the case against him.

“Look at Ross yesterday, he was absolutely racing the 44. The car was just as bad as Connor’s was. But you know what? He already had the mindset: slow down. I don’t care if I’m running last right now. I’m going to give my team enough information. I’m going to make it to the first stage without getting lapped. I’m going to give my team as much information as I possibly can to make it better.”

Chastain took two tyres at a pit stop under those conditions at Michigan, got into cleaner air, held on, and finished 16th. He was still slow. But he was there at the end, gave the team data, and picked up points.

“Zilisch, come on,” Tommy said. “The kid’s been in great race cars his whole career. He’s struggling now because they’re struggling. But he’s got to help them. He’s not going to help them by wrecking every single week.”

Bubba Wallace then added the line that said everything simply: “You can’t drive a slow car fast.”

He also gave it a genuine context. He admitted the mindset trap that struggling teams fall into, when the car is bad, it becomes easy to use the team’s problems as an explanation for everything, including the crashes.

He was clear he wasn’t accusing Zilisch of doing that deliberately. But he was clear about what the solution looks like. Stop crashing. Even when it’s hard. Even when the car is terrible.

The crashes started at the very first race. At the Daytona 500, Zilisch’s No. 88 got loose in Turn 4 on Lap 85 and bounced off Justin Allgaier’s Chevrolet, triggering a chain-reaction wreck that collected Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs, and Austin Dillon. Zilisch finished 33rd, multiple laps down. Atlanta followed with a 30th-place finish, and at COTA, Daniel Suarez spun him out.

At Charlotte, he was collected in Stage One when Austin Cindric spun in front of him.

“As soon as I hit the apron, I was just going too fast to really be able to maneuver the car,” Zilisch said. “I got loose and ended up getting clipped in the right-rear.”

He completed just 52 of the 400 laps at the Coca-Cola 600 and finished 39th. At Nashville, a brake rotor failure sent him into the wall after just 71 laps, which was a mechanical failure, not a driver error, but the result was another DNF. Then, Michigan, where he spun on Lap 3 trying to pass Ricky Stenhouse Jr., made repairs, then spun again on Lap 9 and hit the inside wall nose-first. Through those weekends alone, he posted seven finishes of 30th or worse on the season. And a 14th-place finish at Texas was his best run.

Surely, some of the damage is circumstantial, but Michigan was not. Rather than managing the car through a difficult situation the way Chastain did in the same race, he pushed beyond the limit of what the No. 88 could handle on that day – despite the car being loose.

“I was really loose,” he said after climbing out. “Yeah it’s just unfortunate. Another short race for us.”

The problem is that loose cars are going to be part of this season for Trackhouse, and learning to manage them rather than crash them is the difference between the two teammates that Baldwin and Wallace pointed out.

Red Bull, a New Livery, and Connor Zilisch’s Best Opportunity

The next opportunity to reset everything is in San Diego on June 21. For the first time in over a decade, two fully branded Red Bull cars will race together in NASCAR as Trackhouse comes out with a coordinated paint scheme for the inaugural street race at Naval Base Coronado.

Connor Zilisch’s No. 88 runs in blue, SVG’s No. 97 runs in silver, and parked side by side, the two cars recreate a single Red Bull can, a concept Red Bull’s designers built by splitting the iconic diamond can diagonally between the two cars. Military-style pop-riveted panels are incorporated into the matte finish as a tribute to the active naval base hosting the event.

Red Bull’s connection to NASCAR is not new; they ran their own Cup team from 2006 to 2011 before pulling out entirely. This is their most visible return. They came back as a Trackhouse partner in 2025 and escalated to 25 primary races across the two cars in 2026. Zilisch was added to their global athlete roster when he signed. At 19, he became the youngest driver to wear Red Bull colours at the Daytona 500 since Joey Logano in 2009.

The San Diego street circuit is 3.4 miles long, built around Naval Air Station North Island. It is NASCAR’s first race on an active military base. SVG has won every inaugural NASCAR street race he has entered. Street and road courses are where Connor Zilisch’s Cup numbers are best. If there is a weekend on this schedule built for him to silence the noise, this is it.

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