Zilisch Honored to Race Against Johnson; Learned A Lot in Coke 600

It certainly feels like 18-year-old Connor Zilisch is the future of NASCAR. The phenom, who is a developmental driver for Trackhouse Racing, made his second career NASCAR Cup Series start last weekend in NASCAR's longest race, the Coca-Cola 600, driving the No. 87 Red Bull Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing.

Despite tangling with one of his racing heroes, Jimmie Johnson, in the opening portion of the race, Zilisch was able to gain a lot of experience on his path to a 23rd-place finish, a result, where he logged 398 of the 400 possible laps around the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Simply finishing the race was a massive goal for Zilisch, who is attempting to gain experience behind the wheel of the Next Gen car as he prepares for a potential jump to the NASCAR Cup Series in the coming seasons.

The young racer, who saw his NASCAR Cup Series debut at Circuit of the Americas earlier this season get cut short due to a crash with Daniel Suarez, his Trackhouse Racing teammate, was happy to make it to the end of his first NASCAR Cup Series oval start.

"Glad I made it to the end of it," Zilisch said to Racing America On SI after the race. "Obviously, I didn't get to finish at COTA, but today was a good day. Just learned a lot and checked off a lot of boxes, and although the finish probably isn't what we deserved or what we wanted, it still isn't bad for my first oval race in the Cup Series."

While he checked off a lot of boxes as far as experience in the NASCAR Cup Series goes, the North Carolina native was also able to check off a box from his bucket list as he got to race against one of his all-time heroes in Jimmie Johnson.

Johnson, who was driving the No. 84 LEGACY MOTOR CLUB Toyota, was making his 700th career start on Sunday, and the legendary driver, who took a pre-race photo with Zilisch, actually saw his race come to an end after getting into the side of Zilisch in Turn 4 on Lap 112.

Despite the on-track run-in, Zilisch was extremely honored to race against Johnson, and the young driver places Johnson as the gold standard for young drivers trying to forge their path in NASCAR.

"Yeah, he's one of my heroes. It was an honor to get the chance to race against Jimmie," Zilisch explained. "I hate that we crashed, I guess with each other. He had an issue and came down into me. But yeah, to share a track with a guy like him making his 700th start is really cool. If I'm half the driver he is one day, that would be pretty awesome."

Currently, Zilisch doesn't have any additional NASCAR Cup Series starts scheduled this season, but the driver has been very impressive in his rookie campaign in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

Driving the No. 88 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, Zilisch has captured a win, two top-fives and four top-10 finishes to go along with three poles, and he ranks sixth in the championship standings after the season's opening 13 races.

Zilisch missed the event at Texas Motor Speedway on May 3 as he was recovering from a lower back injury sustained in a hard last-lap crash at Talladega Superspeedway on April 26. Zilisch was in the lead when he was turned on the backstretch in that incident by Jesse Love.

In his first race back from injury this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Zilisch notched a runner-up finish to William Byron in the BetMGM 300 NASCAR Xfinity Series event.

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