At Circuit of the Americas in NASCAR O’Reilly Series Auto Parts, all eyes were on teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch. They shared the front row, and were the clear favorites for the win.
While SVG drove off with the race win, Zilisch limped home to a 21st place finish. That followed a race where he struggled with brake issues, spent an extended period in the pits, and then got wrecked in the final laps of the race.
Zilisch had driven from the very back of the field to run fourth in the final five laps of the race. He was battling Hendrick Motorsports rookie Corey Day for position as they exited Turn 2 with Zilisch on the outside. Day appeared to try and slide up behind him, but made contact and sent Zilisch spinning wildly off the track.
In frustration, Zilisch radioed that Day was a ‘hack’ as he rejoined the field, losing over 15 positions and sustaining nose damage.
Day went on to finish fifth, scoring back-to-back top fives at the start of his rookie campaign. In isolation, that looks very impressive, but he was at the epicenter of some controversy at both Atlanta and now COTA.
“Yeah, I mean, I think everybody saw what happened,” said Zilisch after climbing from the car. “You know, I don’t need to explain myself, but really unfortunate. Our Chevrolet was really fast. We had to change the left rear brake and the entire caliper. I hate that it ended like that for us. We were gonna finish top five there and the same guy that does this every week, does this. Hopefully he can figure it out but yeah, unfortunate. I
“It was a lot of fun, we made up a lot of ground and we were one of the fastest cars all day long. All I want is an apology, but the guy just stands over there and stares at me, and just makes it worse, but he’ll figure it out and you know, we’ll go on tomorrow. I’m trying to have a better day tomorrow.
Day then gave his side of the story, noting that issues with his car may have been a factor in the incident.
“They (the team) haven’t really got a great diagnosis on it yet, but we had some part of the pan over the front end come loose or something and, I lost just a lot of my platform and my front turn there and it was really difficult there in any high speed corner. Just really nose up, splitter’s not close to the ground, so I was struggling for turn.
“Yeah, he [Zilisch] got right in front of me there and as soon as he did and crossed over my nose, I lost a little bit of what I had left, and he got in front of me where I was going to be. So yeah, I’m going to get no sympathy for that I guess, (based) off my track record, but it wasn’t intentional. I didn’t want to wreck him or have that happen.”
As for Zilisch’s request for apology an apology, Day didn’t sound opposed to it. “I got no problem going over there and talking to him,” said Day. “It was my mistake, whether I had a broken race car or not, so, you know, I’ll own up to it. I will apologize, no problem.”
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