Denny Hamlin loves Connor Zilisch going to Trackhouse Racing and the signing pulled off by Justin Marks.
The 17-year-old phenom already made waves this calendar year. He recently set the track record at COTA in NASCAR Truck Series qualifying.
Hamlin is eager to watch what Zilisch is made of moving forward.
“Yeah, I mean, I think you’re probably just hearing about it a little bit more,” Hamlin said on his podcast. “He’s been around a while, he signed with Track House. Great signing by Justin Marks and that whole team there, some forward thinking, he is certainly a wildly talented driver. He’s won a lot of road course stuff. Very similar to Shane in the sense of, you know, he is a road course ace and he is only probably half the age like you know?
“He certainly wins just about anything he gets in. I think he’s 17 years old. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, that’s just crazy. At 17 I was racing mini stocks, you know, my little four cylinders at Langley Speedway and Southside Speedway.”
At this point in his very young career, Zilisch seemingly has a head start, no pun intended.
“So way ahead of the curve for sure,” Hamlin said. “I mean, he runs ovals because he runs the ARCA series, is that correct? So, I think yeah certainly the future’s bright there. He’s, you know, gonna have a great ladder, a great system to come up in and you know, to get some more truck races and future XFINITY rides …”
Since signing with Trackhouse Racing as a development driver, Zilisch has been in the Chevy program. There he has worked out with a lot of other drivers. Of course, he’s close with the Trackhouse group, as well as Spire Motorsports, who he is driving for in the Truck Series.
Among those NASCAR drivers working with Zilisch is Kyle Larson. The 2021 Cup Series champion knows a thing or two about talent. For the last few years, Zilisch has been on his radar, and he knows just how good he is behind the wheel. Any wheel, for that matter.
“I don’t know, he’s 18 I guess or whatever, but super mature and extremely good,” Larson said in his media availability after winning the Xfinity Series pole. “I’m disappointed he was only three-quarters of a second faster than the field and not more than that because I figured he would be. But I texted him earlier this week and I was like, ‘Man, you should smash the field this weekend.’ So, it’ll be more of the same tomorrow [in the race] as long as nobody runs through him.”
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