{"id":49910,"date":"2025-02-28T23:00:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T05:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=49910"},"modified":"2025-03-01T07:54:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T13:54:54","slug":"teen-zilisch-tops-focused-health-250-qualifying-at-cota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/28\/teen-zilisch-tops-focused-health-250-qualifying-at-cota\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen Zilisch tops focused Health 250 qualifying at COTA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Connor Zilisch powers his No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet to the pole position for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Focused Health 250 at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas. Photo by  Michael C. Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Courtesy of NASCAR at COTA Media Relations<\/em><\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas \u2013 The rapid rise of Connor Zilisch continued Friday at Circuit of The Americas (COTA).<\/p>\n

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Connor Zilisch captured the pole for Saturday\u2019s Focused Health 250 NXS race on the National Course at Circuit of the Americas. The 18-year old had a lap time of 97.262 seconds at 88.832 miles per hour. Photo by Michael C. Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

Less than six months after winning his NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) debut at Watkins Glen, and just two days before he makes his first NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) start, the 18-year-old captured the pole for Saturday\u2019s Focused Health 250 NXS race (1:30 p.m. CT, TV: CW, Radio: PRN, SiriusXM) on the National Course with a lap time of 97.262 seconds at 88.832 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

The Mooresville, N.C. native paced a stellar qualifying performance by JR Motorsports, which earned four of the top five qualifying positions. NCS full-time driver Ross Chastain, driving for JR Motorsports, will join Zilisch on the front row. Teammates Justin Allgaier took fourth and Carson Kvapil was fifth.<\/p>\n

NCS regular William Byron, driving a Hendrick Motorsports entry, was the only driver to break through the JR Motorsports stranglehold by qualifying third.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re going to have a really good car here,\u201d Zilisch told media after qualifying. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to have Ross here to push me to my limits. I\u2019ve just got to go out and do my job. At the end of the day, it\u2019s executing that\u2019s going to win the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Connor Zilisch powers his No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet to the pole position for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Focused Health 250 at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas. Photo by Michael C. Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

After posting the fastest lap in Friday\u2019s practice, the young hot shoe backed up his performance by outpacing the field by 0.184 seconds on the 17-turn, 2.4-mile circuit in qualifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really good start to the weekend. It\u2019s been a really rough start to the year, so getting some momentum is much-needed,\u201d said Zilisch, who makes his NCS debut with Trackhouse Racing with practice and qualifying Saturday. \u201cTomorrow\u2019s going to be a little tougher\u2026 first time in a Cup car, the people around me, the noise. I\u2019m just going to have to keep doing my thing. I\u2019m excited to see what the Cup car is like tomorrow, but it\u2019s going to be tough to stay calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a strong showing in EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix NCS qualifying Saturday, Zilisch is looking to become the youngest driver to make a NCS start since Joey Logano in 2008.<\/p>\n

IMSA\u2019s VP Racing SportsCar Challenge (IMSA), making its debut at the NASCAR at COTA weekend, also had qualifying Friday and will have a pair of races Saturday at 8:40 a.m. and 5 p.m. The top five in IMSA qualifying are as follows:<\/p>\n

P3 class: Oscar Tunjo, Valentino Catalano, Jonathan Woolridge, Brian Thienes, Mirco Schultis.<\/p>\n

GTDX class: Jake Walker, Adam Adelson, Matias Perez Companc, AJ Muss, Samantha Tan.<\/p>\n

GSX class: Kiko Porto, Ian Porter, Steven Clemons, Chris Waltz, Patrick Wilmot.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day Friday, Trackhouse Racing teammates Chastain and Shane van Gisbergen joined Speedway Motorsports\u2019 Senior VP of Operations and Development Steve Swift to host media on a tour of COTA\u2019s new 2.4-mile National Course layout. The drivers pointed out the challenges presented by the new cut through from turns 6A to 6B, which cuts about a mile off of the Full Course layout that they\u2019ve run the past four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Courtesy of NASCAR at COTA Media Relations AUSTIN, Texas \u2013 The rapid rise of Connor Zilisch continued Friday at Circuit of The Americas (COTA). Less than six months after winning his NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) debut at Watkins Glen, and just two days before he makes his first NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) start, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":49912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38,11],"tags":[39,905,16,181],"class_list":["post-49910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-circuit-of-the-americas","category-nascar","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-connor-zilisch","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-xfinity-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/A42Z6481a.jpg?fit=2379%2C1586&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-cZ0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49910"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49923,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910\/revisions\/49923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}