It took trading some paint with Brenden Queen to do it, but Connor Zilisch was clear to the lead on a late restart and drove away to his first CARS Tour Late Model Stock victory on Saturday at Hickory Motor Speedway.
The Birthplace of the NASCAR Stars moniker proved to be fortuitous given where Zilisch is headed following 2024 victories in the Rolex 24, Sebring 12 and a pole in his NASCAR Truck Series debut last month at Circuit of the Americas.
Despite those accolades, and the TransAm championship, this win ranks pretty high up there for a lot of reasons.
“I know I won the Rolex, Sebring but a win here in a Late Model Stock at Hickory is a dream come true,” Zilisch said. “This level of competition is incredible. You have 15 cars that can win on any given Saturday. I think my best finish in a Late Model Stock was ninth and people say, ‘he can’t race on an oval’ so it just means a lot.”
Zilisch does have a previous win in the Pro Late Model division but this is one of the premier divisions in all of short track racing.
“The driver has to know exactly what he wants out of the car,” Zilisch said. “Throughout the race, you have to think a lot about keeping the tires under you and I just love that the driver has to make such a big difference. It’s so much different than what I grew up doing but I love the challenge.”
Zilisch drove from 11th to first take the lead from Chad McCumbee with 38 laps to go and survived a series of restart duels with Queen to score the win. All things considered; Queen was pleased with a runner-up after finishing 19th in the season opener at Southern National last month.
“I can sit here and whine about Kenly but we weren’t good enough,” Queen said. “That was a tough way to start our season so then I was looking forward to getting back to Jacksonville, we won there last year, and it gets rained out so that makes our next race my worst track.
“But Lee Pulliam Performance brought a different package and we were fast all weekend. I gave it all I had. He was a little better than us but I had him beat off 2. He got into me and I got into him. I tried all I could. I don’t know that we could have held him off anyway. What an effort.”
Chad McCumbee led most of the first half but did so without a working radio. He said he was clearing himself off the corner and just burned up his tires trying to manage everything.
But, he did finish after failing to finish the opener at Southern National with a brake failure, which plagued him all of last season too.
“Finishing this race means a great deal,” McCumbee said. “If we can just start finishing some races, we’ll win some races.”
The only major incident of the race involved Conner Jones spinning due to contact from behind from Jacob Heafner.
Jones ran all the way around to the backstretch to voice his displeasure under caution. The contact was so hard with the wall that it left Jones visibly gassed.
Carson Kvapil, who entered the race as the points leader after winning at Southern National, missed this race to make his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut at Martinsville Speedway. He finished fourth in that race. Mason Diaz drove the JR Motorsports No. 8 in his place but failed to finish due to a mechanical failure.
CARS Late Model Stock Tour Tuff Shed 125
Hickory Motor Speedway
April 6 2024
- Connor Zilish
- Brenden Queen
- Chad McCumbee
- Connor Hall
- Mini Tyrrell
- Bobby McCarty
- Kade Brown
- Ryan Millington
- Brent Crews
- Treyten Lapcevich
- Cody Dempster
- Jacob Heafner
- Landen Lewis
- Brandon Pierce
- Landon Huffman
- Josh Kossek
- Bryce Applegate
- Ronnie Bassett Jr.
- Buddy Isles
- Katie Hettinger
- Logan Clark
- Jonathan Findley
- Deac McCaskill
- Mason Diaz
- Andrew Grady
- Conner Jones
- Sam Butler
- Cameron Bolin
- Gio Ruggiero
- Taylor Satterfield
