By the end of Tuesday night, Connor Zilisch and Jesse Love were performing a duet of ‘Sweet Caroline’ at the NASCAR Awards afterparty but there was a little awkwardness to get past following the events of Saturday’s Xfinity Series championship race.
Zilisch was the most dominant driver of the season, delivering 10 wins, 20 top-5s and 23 top-10s in 32 races, having missed one for a back injury sustained at Talladega. His season was so dominant, that even missing a race, he still outscored everyone else in points with one fewer start.
So when Love, his best friend, a de facto brother and former roommate, passed him to win the championship with only one prior victory in the season, it created an emotional whirlwind for everyone involved.
Zilisch was more or less robbed by the championship format, in the final year that NASCAR will use the final four format, and it left him very emotional in victory lane and in the hours afterwards.
“I’ve come to terms with what’s happened,” Zilisch said on Tuesday during a media availability before the Awards Show. “And at this point, I can’t do anything about it, so there’s no reason to hang on to it. I mean, it’s life. Sun came up Sunday morning, and the world kept spinning.”
In the days since, Zilisch has started to reconcile the body of work of his season compared to the end results of the one-race final showdown.
“At the end of the day, I did everything I could,” Zilisch said. “And my team, the whole JR Motorsports group, we gave our all, and I don’t have any reason to be upset about what happened. Yeah, it stings. It sucks. But yeah, we did everything we could and we tried our best. If I walked out of that place knowing that I could have done something differently, then I probably would have been a little more upset. But I gave it my all. I did everything I could, and yeah, the result wasn’t meant to be.”
Zilisch did greet and hug Love in Victory Lane, but did not go back to the house they rented in Scottsdale with some friends of theirs this weekend, before finally talking on Sunday when they checked into the hotel for the championship awards show.
“We had a, not a heart-to-heart, but just wanted to know what he thought about it,” Love said. “I just talked to him about it, because it would be awkward if we didn’t address it, so once we did, it was a good conversation.
“I’m not going to share we said, but it was a good conversation.”
Zilisch did share the contents of the conversation.
“He did nothing wrong,” Zilisch said. “He asked me, he’s like, ‘are you mad at me?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t have any reason to be mad at you, dude. You’re not the one who created the situation. You just executed when you needed to.’ And I have no reason to be upset about that. Yeah, I celebrated with him and we had fun. I mean, it’s just part of it. I have no reason to be upset with him and hold it against him.”
Jesse Love, Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet
Photo by: Sean Gardner / Getty Images
Zilisch got a lot of words and texts of support after Saturday too.
“Kyle Larson texted me (on Saturday),” Zilisch said. “And he just said, ‘This isn’t going to change your career. I know it sucks.’ And you know, he wrote me a nice message. Denny texted me that night, kind of similar. So yeah, I mean, there was a few people that reached out that it means a lot to hear from. Everybody I saw was really nice to me all weekend long. And it helps to have people who let you know that you still succeeded. But at the end of the day, the emotion is still the same. But yeah, it’s good to have that kind of peace of mind that people still believe in me and that that wasn’t really a life-changing moment for me.”
And really, Sunday in the Cup race was kind of a repeat of sorts in that Denny Hamlin led the most laps and dominated the finale, after a season in which he posted the most wins, but a late caution created overtime where really close friend Kyle Larson beat him on a pit strategy decision.
“It’s different because Connor had the standout, history making season, where I don’t think there was like one standout in Cup, at least in my opinion, right,” Love said. “But I do kind of feel like I understand a little of what that was like.”
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