There hasn't been a prospect surrounded by more hype entering his rookie NASCAR Cup Series season this century than Connor Zilisch, who won 10 O'Reilly Auto Parts Series races as a rookie in 2025 before ultimately landing with Trackhouse Racing, where he had been a development driver since 2024, in a full-time capacity at the Cup level for 2026.
While it certainly hasn't been all of his own doing, that word "hype" has slowly but surely evolved into the word "overhype", because his rookie season has been nothing shy of an unmitigated disaster.
Rick Ware Racing's Cody Ware is the only full-time driver he's ahead of in the point standings, and that has been the case for quite some time.
In 22 races, Zilisch has scored fewer points than 23XI Racing's Corey Heim has scored for the No. 67 team in eight. Heim isn't Cup Series points eligible, but he'd be 13 points ahead of Zilisch if he were, averaging nearly 19 more points per race.
It's easy to look back and say that it was always going to take time for Zilisch to develop into a Cup Series star.
Convenient, isn't it?
But absolutely nobody was saying that at the start, much less those now saying that he was always doomed to struggle. Nobody was predicting anything other than Jeff Gordon 2.0, whether they'll admit it now or not.
Entering the 2026 season, Zilisch was among the top 10 favorites to win the championship, notably tops among the three-car Trackhouse team (Ross Chastain, Shane van Gisbergen).
Instead, he's facing elimination from championship contention with four races remaining on the 26-race regular season schedule.
And quite frankly, he's effectively already eliminated, as long as everyone else shows up.
Zilisch's deficit to the playoff cut line is more than his entire point tally, and he is basically a lock to be eliminated in the series' next race at Iowa Speedway. He is 302 points outside of the top 16 with 76 points on the table each race weekend (304 for the rest of the regular season).
But a driver can only make up a maximum of 75 points on another driver in a single race, meaning that as long as every full-time driver keeps showing up, Zilisch is already mathematically eliminated from even qualifying for the playoffs since he's more than 300 points below the cutoff.
Perhaps being officially eliminated will eliminate some of the pressure that has come with being labeled the "next Jeff Gordon" and being (allegedly) linked to an F1 seat.
But for a driver already tipped to be Hendrick Motorsports' next driver in 2028, you've got to hope he finally shows at least some level of promise at the Cup level to justify the hype he generated coming into the year.
Trackhouse Racing may be struggling, but they're certainly not 35th-place-level struggling. SVG is in a provisional playoff spot, and Chastain still has an outside chance of getting in himself.
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