Connor Zilisch may be NASCAR’s next big star. He also still lives at home with his parents

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — NASCAR’s next great superstar lives at home with his parents.

Connor Zilisch is a 19-year-old American racing prodigy who opens his NASCAR Cup Series rookie campaign in Sunday’s Daytona 500. Naturally, he’s always in a hurry on the racetrack. But he’s in no rush to get his own place, and his family is just fine with that.

“I have no reason to move out,” Zilisch said. “My parents are awesome, and I’m able to have friends over and do things that I want to do — as long as I clean up after myself and don’t make a mess.”

It’s not every day you meet a Cup Series driver who still lives with Mom and Dad, but it makes perfect sense for Zilisch. Connor’s mom, Jan, whips up home-cooked meals (pork chops and spaghetti are among the favorites) and his racing buddies show up to swim in the backyard — at least until quiet hours begin.

“We did have to talk to him at one point because it kind of became a frat house with the pool,” said Jim Zilisch, Connor’s dad. “Our bedroom is right there and the hot tub is right there (outside it). It’s like ‘Connor, it’s 11:30…’”

“… I’ve got work the next day,” Jan added.

“They don’t even knock! They just walk in,” Jim said of Connor’s driver friends. “It’s like their house.”

That’s just gentle teasing, because Jim and Jan are more than happy for Connor to be at home (for now at least). Their son’s upcoming rookie season in the Cup Series is already going to be stressful and filled with pressure, and if it makes it less overwhelming to have an always-stocked pantry and freshly laundered bedsheets while surrounded by support — well, why not?

“I’m still 19 years old, and I’m still a kid,” Connor said. “It’s not like I’m getting to the age where it’s like, ‘Alright, this is getting a little weird.’”

Actually, there is something weird about his age — but it has nothing to do with living at home. What Zilisch has already achieved as a teenager, considering how little experience as he has in a stock car, is astonishing. Not all that long ago, relatively speaking, Zilisch was a kid with a brilliant road course racing background who never dreamed of ending up in the NASCAR world; his first-ever oval race was only in June 2022.

But at every turn, Zilisch has shown an uncanny ability to adapt and get up to speed quickly. Zilisch has won 11 races in NASCAR’s second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (the equivalent of Triple-A baseball) and finished in the top five 23 times there — in just 36 starts.

Now, after just one season in the minors, Zilisch is getting a call to the big leagues. He will drive the No. 88 Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing while trying to outpace the excitement generated by a community bullish about what he could mean for NASCAR — which is badly in need of recognizable names to help restore its footing within the American sports landscape.

“The success or failure of any sport is the attraction of the athletes to the fans,” Trackhouse owner Justin Marks said. “What Tiger did for golf, Lance Armstrong for cycling, Conor McGregor in UFC — these guys transcend the sport and elevate it.

“Connor has that opportunity in NASCAR. He’s a generational talent, a compelling personality and a great story. His ceiling is so high. He has the potential to be one of the biggest stars in NASCAR.”

That might sound like an awful lot to put on the shoulders of a teenager, and borderline unfair in a world where too much media hype often sparks backlash. Except if any young driver is well-equipped to handle the expectations, it’s Zilisch.

Just ask his parents, who used to say Connor was 15 going on 30.

Now they say he’s 19 going on 40.

Jim remembers a time when he looked down at his then-7-year-old son and thought: “This kid is either going to be a race car driver or President of the United States.”

“He’s just got that aura about him, and he’s had it his entire life,” Jim said.

While a run for political office will have to wait, Connor’s racing career is already at full speed — and it has been since he climbed into a go-kart for the first time at age 4.

Jim described himself as a lifelong car geek, but his schoolteacher mother was a single parent. Money was tight, and there was certainly no thought of getting into racing.

When he got a banking job and moved to suburban Charlotte in 1994, a co-worker noticed Jim’s 1995 RX7 and asked if he ever took it to run on track days at a local motorsports complex.

“You can do that?” Jim responded.

Over time, Jim became such a regular at the track days that he eventually started moonlighting as a driving instructor in order to gain free entry. The automotive passion continued even after he and Jan had Connor, their third son, although it eventually reached a breaking point for Jan.

One day, as Jim was off pursuing his hobby at Virginia International Raceway, he answered his cell phone to hear a tired and frustrated Jan on the other end.

“You can’t leave me with all these kids,” she said while juggling a 7-year-old, 4-year-old and baby Connor.

Jim’s solution? He sold his track car and bought four karts — one for him and each of the boys so they could go with him. That ultimately became Connor’s introduction to racing.

“How long has he been doing this?” someone asked Jim the first time Connor went out by himself on the track, noticing how the youngster seemed to nail the apexes with an uncanny natural ability.

“This is it,” Jim replied, gesturing to the track.

Technically, the minimum age to race a kart at Carolina Motorsports Park was 5. But the track officials saw Connor’s comfort level on the track and let him participate in a race at age 4.

He won that, as you might have guessed.

When Connor first had a gas-powered kart, Jim wanted him to get some experience in their suburban Charlotte neighborhood. But he was nervous Connor would run through the end of the cul-de-sac into a mailbox or oncoming car, so Jim tied a long green rope to the rear bumper of the kart. Neighbors chuckled — and filmed — as Jim sprinted behind Connor’s kart, holding the rope as a makeshift safety wire.

“I’d pay $10,000 for that video,” Jim said.

When Connor was 7, the family started regularly traveling for races outside of North Carolina — and beating competition across the country in the process. Jim remembers one race in Indiana where other fathers were “yelling at me for cheating,” certain the Zilisch family must have been doing something to gain an advantage.

Another time, Jim remembers the famed driver Juan Pablo Montoya leaning on the fence eyeing Connor’s kart after a race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where Montoya’s son was also racing.

“After awhile, they all came to realize it was skill, not cheating,” Jim said. “But there were an awful lot of eyebrows raised.”

Karting is a breeding ground for the world’s best road racing drivers, like those who compete in Formula 1. But the best karting competition isn’t found in the United States, so the Zilisch family eventually decided Connor’s best opportunity was to race in Europe.

Jim and Jan were both working full time (Jan has a PhD in pharmacology and works for a cancer biotech company), so they had to stay behind instead of joining their son overseas. Instead, starting at age 11, Connor was chaperoned by coach and mechanic Gary Willis and developed a unique sense of independence and worldliness as a result of his travels.

“He never complained, he rarely called,” Jan said. “He just loved being out and discovering different countries.”

If Connor was in Europe for eight weeks, Jim would take a week and a half of vacation to try and hit two race weekends. Other than that, Connor was on his own with Gary.

In that sense, Connor was just like his mom. Jan was a gymnast who traveled to far-flung places like Romania and Hungary in the ’80s, before the Iron Curtain fell, while competing internationally for Canada.

An Ontario native, Jan was a member of the 1983 Canadian National Team and even made the 1984 Olympic team — but was injured during an early practice in Los Angeles and did not compete. She went on to earn All-American honors as a member of the University of Florida gymnastics team.

“When I was traveling a lot and missing out on school, I always knew I could never complain to her,” Connor said. “Because whenever I tried to complain to her, it was like, ‘Dude, I used to have to sit in the gym for 40 hours a week and travel across the world for gymnastics — and there was no end of the road where I could get paid.’”

But there was that possibility for Connor, although it was a distant reality until 2017. That summer, he won a prestigious karting race in Italy against 164 of the world’s best karters — a field that included future Mercedes F1 driver Kimi Antonelli.

You might read that and wonder: Wait a second. If Zilisch was good enough to beat someone who became a Mercedes F1 driver, why didn’t he ever go into the F1 ladder system?

The answer is money. Though the Zilisch family wasn’t hurting, Jim couldn’t afford to be writing huge checks to fund his son’s racing. So although he tried to get Connor into an F1 team’s driver academy based on talent alone, Jim was eventually told a massive financial investment would still be required even if Connor had the skills to do it.

“That’s when the F1 dream officially died,” Jim said.

Connor returned to the United States and the family figured professional racing might not be in the cards after all. Jim was getting ready to retire from banking and told Connor he’d pay for two years of racing Spec Miatas — an entry-level division of sports car racing — before his son had to figure it out himself.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Connor ended up racing karts on the same team as Keelan Harvick, the son of future NASCAR Hall of Famer Kevin Harvick, and a connection with the elder Harvick opened more doors. Eventually, Connor made his way into Trans Am road racing, and his stunningly quick success there attracted the eye of the NASCAR world.

The Zilisch bandwagon has been a runaway train ever since, except no one in the family ever thought it would be headed toward stock cars. Despite living in NASCAR’s Charlotte-area hub since the ’90s, the Zilisch family was never into NASCAR.

“Daytona 500 comes on, you watch a little bit, but it was all casual,” he said.

Plus, Jim was always a road racing guy. The idea of watching drivers go around in a circle for three hours didn’t seem particularly appealing, though he said he’s learned to appreciate it.

In the meantime, there’s something else for the family to appreciate at the racetrack. People keep telling Jim and Jan how shocking it is to see Connor’s rapid success, how unbelievable it is for their son to jump into a new car and win so quickly, how wild it must be for them to see this all happen.

Except they’re hardly surprised at all. They’ve already seen Connor do this for his entire life.

“I’m watching everyone else to see the reaction,” Jim said, “because I already know it’s coming.”