Red Bull has another 'Verstappen' in the last place you'd expect

A wonderkid who is fought over and picked up by Red Bull, destined to break all sorts of age records and become one of the sport's greats?

Stop me if you've heard this fairytale before.

But we’re not talking about Max Verstappen. Red Bull's latest star is from America and went from racing Kimi Antonelli in karting to Mazda MX-5s - and now he looks set to take NASCAR by storm. It sounds more like a movie plot than a real racing CV, but welcome to the world of Connor Zilisch.

He only turned 18 in July but is a name some may have heard of already. He was a very good karter, to the point where he beat Antonelli - very infrequently, admittedly - although it was clear to Zilisch and his family that sportscar racing was his realistic goal given a lack of funding.

However, having been team-mate to the son of NASCAR champion Kevin Harvick, the latter opened some doors for Zilisch and the man who ran Kimi Raikkonen in NASCAR recently, Justin Marks, signed Zilisch to a Trackhouse team development deal at the end of last year, which put him on a new path to NASCAR.

Perhaps that was destined to be considering Zilisch grew up in NASCAR country, in North Carolina.

In September 2024, he was picked up as a Red Bull athlete, alongside fellow Trackhouse driver Shane van Gisbergen (below, right next to Zilisch), who has transitioned from Australian Supercars to NASCAR.

Next year he'll race full-time in NASCAR's second tier Xfinity series with the goal of winning that and jumping straight to the Cup series in 2026. Then the aim is to break a 65-year record and become the series' youngest champion.

Zilisch will need to be younger than 23 years, seven months and 15 days to beat Bill Rexford's record set back in 1950. So, he'll need to do it in his first four seasons!

The Xfinity move comes with the bonus of racing for legendary driver Dale Earnhardt Jr's team JR Motorsports. Truthfully, a fair chunk of Zilisch's resume reads like a motorsport fairytale.

He's scored class wins at the Daytona 24 Hours and Sebring 12 Hours for Era Motorsport in the LMP2 category, won his first four ARCA races (a feeder series for the NASCAR ladder), finished fourth on his Truck Series debut and then, the icing on the cake, won on his first try in an Xfinity race at Watkins Glen, becoming the series' second-youngest winner behind Joey Logano, the freshly crowned three-time Cup champion.

To say he was 'only' racing Mazda MX-5s two years ago would be offensive to the MX-5 Cup - which, just as an example, featured a winning margin of over six tenths only once in 15 races this year, and is incredibly highly-regarded in the US - but given where he is now, facing a full-season Xfinity deal, it feels like the life of a different person.

"Every opportunity I get, the next one's cooler," Zilisch laughs, albeit with an undertone of 'I really know how lucky I am and I'm just enjoying this moment', when speaking to The Race.

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We're chatting at an autograph table and he somehow manages to give The Race his full attention while also making a couple of fans late to the session feel welcome and get a picture or signature. A Red Bull bottle sits just in front of him.

"I'm looking forward to the next few years. Obviously, I'm going down a NASCAR path, which is different than most kids that grew up doing what I did. But I'm really looking forward to it.

"NASCAR is the biggest form of motorsport in America. If I can succeed in NASCAR for long enough, hopefully I'll have enough time at the end of my career to come back and do different styles of motorsport.

"That's always been kind of my goal, and something I've wanted to do for a long time."

The Le Mans 24 Hours would be top of that list for Zilisch, who is totally right to take the opportunity to go down the path of the most famous and lucrative series he can at this stage - just as Jeff Gordon did when he had multiple options early in his career before becoming NASCAR's most famous star and a four-time champion.

But you can tell Zilisch hasn't totally given up on the idea of racing elsewhere. He loves IndyCar and single-seaters, too.

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Luckily, he's joined a Trackhouse team that preaches motorsport versatility. Not only does it race in MotoGP but it literally has a NASCAR sat in a garage waiting for drivers from other series to give it a go, like Raikkonen in 2022-23 and van Gisbergen, who famously won at his first attempt on the Chicago street circuit.

Marks is a racer through and through and good one at that. He's clearly taken the 'Tour de France' approach to Zilisch; signing him early to a long-term deal is a gamble but means whatever Zilisch flourishes into, he'll be under a Trackhouse contract.

While F1 teams are picking up more and more drivers at karting level, that hasn't translated to NASCAR yet. But Marks is one of the most astute people in the NASCAR paddock for being aware of trends developing elsewhere.

He's almost immediately been rewarded with a Zilisch victory, although the Watkins Glen Xfinity win came with the JR Motorsports team.

It led to widespread acclaim from NASCAR's top stars - many of whom hadn't been aware of Zilisch. Last year's Cup champion Ryan Blaney and NASCAR's current best road course racer Tyler Reddick congratulated him after the race and Kyle Larson took to X praising him, too. And rightly so.

"The feeling after that race was indescribable," Zilisch says. Just hearing his voice break in the video below shows just how 'indescribable' he felt it was.

"I was in tears in my interview and holding back emotion. But that's what it's all about, right? You work so hard for those moments, and when things go as well as that you got to enjoy it, and you've got to appreciate those moments.

"There's so many cool events that have happened, and I'm just trying to enjoy each one as much as I can, and try not to focus too much on the future and how exciting it is for me and just enjoy what I'm doing at the moment."

Because of his karting background and the expectation of a sportscar racing future, the big question now is how Zilisch will adapt to ovals as a fundamentally excellent young road-course racer.

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Zilisch didn't race on one until 2022 and that's undoubtedly where his development curve will be steepest. But his showings this year have often offered much more than the results will tell you.

People doubting his oval credentials need to look closer than just those on-paper results - although, even on that point, he won several oval races in ARCA and only missed out on a title when he couldn't avoid a stationary crashed car on the Bristol track.

Let's take his outings in the Truck series (NASCAR's third tier) as another example. His record on ovals reads 29th, 19th, 33rd and 12th.

But the 29th came after he was wrecked while running in the top 10. The 19th, he started on pole and was wrecked while in the top five. The 33rd came after a crash on his first superspeedway outing. 

"Truck racing is so tough," adds Zilisch. "There's so many variables outside of your control.

"It's been frustrating not getting those results, but I still have to look to the long-term goal and realise that this year is all about learning for me, and next year, when I go to race for a championship, I can't have races like that.

“I've got to get good finishes and have to be consistent. But this year, I've kind of been open with the fact that as long as I'm learning and getting better every race, that's what matters."

Zilisch very rarely loses his cool - he was even magnanimous in losing the ARCA title despite it not being his fault - and presents himself extremely well, full of maturity for his age.

Every engineer, team boss or driver he's shared a car with that The Race has consulted this year reckons that Zilisch is the real deal. His adaptability is something that is always mentioned, and it's easy to see why given how many different cars he's driven in the last couple of years.

Maybe that will help as he transitions to an oval-first series, and in his goal of becoming the youngest Cup Series champion.

After that, he and Marks will no doubt be dreaming up a MotoGP crossover, Dakar Rally and Bathurst 1000 Supercars entry for him, and for that we can wait with excited anticipation. A recent filming day with Formula 1 drivers Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda (above) might be the closest he gets to a future in grand prix racing, but who knows - especially given F1's plans for a post-season rookie race?

You don't have to work hard to dream what might be possible for Zilisch given what he's achieved already in such a short space of time.