Could NASCAR's rising 'comet' make Indy 500 debut? 'I don't want to wait'

Show Caption

INDIANAPOLIS — Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn’t worked alongside Connor Zilisch for a full calendar year, and the legendary NASCAR driver-turned-team-owner already feels comfortable heaping as much praise as one could imagine on his 19-year-old rising star who just in a few short years has gained a reputation of driving just about anything — and more importantly, winning in just about anything, too.

“The only thing I think is close (to compare Zilisch’s talent to) is Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson,” said Earnhardt Jr. when asked Saturday evening in the wake of Zilisch, who just turned 19 Tuesday, winning the NASCAR Xfinity series race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval, delivering Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports its 100th victory and Zilisch's third consecutive Xfinity win, fourth in six starts and sixth since he made his series debut last September.

Gordon, one of the most influential and successful modern-day NASCAR Cup series drivers, logged his first Cup series win in his second full-time season at 22 years old and would go on to win four championships (fourth most all-time) and 93 races (third most all-time). Johnson grabbed his first Cup win as a rookie in his 13th career start, has logged 83 Cup series wins (tied for sixth most all-time) and holds a tie for the series’ most championships in its history at seven.

“He might be even more of a comet,” Earnhardt Jr. continued. "(They) were sorta rare, and he might be even rarer than that.”

Already hotly rumored to be stepping up to the Cup series in 2026 — almost certainly for a ride with Trackhouse Racing where he was signed a year ago as a development driver at 17 years old — could Zilisch’s stardom be destined to a near-term ride on racing’s biggest stage?

In the wake of McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown teasing “a trick up (his) sleeve” for Arrow McLaren’s next one-off Indianapolis 500 entry, the prospect of which Brown has called both “unreal” and “mega” on separate occasions this summer, Zilisch has been mentioned by multiple paddock sources as, if nothing else, a qualified, interesting candidate for such an opportunity — with one source going so far as to suggest that talks have been held about a potential future test with the team and Zilisch.

Last weekend at Toronto, Brown told IndyStar that Arrow McLaren would be pursuing an oval test with a prospective future 500 one-off driver and that “conversations are ongoing.”

Separate sources say that Brown’s favored prospects lie elsewhere with another high-profile option in the racing world.

Zilisch, who grew up imagining himself headed down a racing route toward sportscars, IndyCar or Formula 1 and who went to Europe at 12 years old to pursue high-level karting experience, but who eventually found himself racing and Mazda MX-5 Cup and various late-model series races in 2022 and 2023, said Saturday an Indy 500 appearance would “certainly” be a bucket-list item for his career.

“I would love to race in the Indianapolis 500. I grew up watching it on TV, and in my opinion, it’s the biggest race in the world, and as a racecar driver, you want to win those races,” Zilisch said Saturday. “I don’t know when the opportunity would come or how it would come or who I’d race with, but obviously with Kyle (Larson) doing the double, it’s possible.

“There’s a lot of implications, and it’s a hard thing to pull off, but if I were to have a bucket list, it would certainly be on it.”

When pushed more as to when in his career he’d ideally pursue such an endeavor — and more specifically whether he’d be comfortable juggling such a task as he’s likely to be making his transition to the Cup series — Zilisch toyed both with the idea of waiting and getting his bearings and jumping straight away at an opportunity, should one matriculate.

“I definitely want to be settled here before I commit to doing something like that. It’s a big time commitment, and I need to focus on what I’m doing here first, but down the road, if I get settled in and I’m doing well on Sundays (in Cup), it’s certainly something I’d want to do,” Zilisch said. “But I don’t want to wait. It’s such a cool race, and even today, just driving past every grandstand and imagining people in every seat, that’s something that’s pretty unreal.

“So I definitely want to be able to experience that, and the only time to do that is in May, so hopefully I’ll get the chance to do that.”

Among the boxes that would have to be checked in pursuit of any sort of future Zilisch-Arrow McLaren Indy 500 deal, the biggest one would already seem to be cleared: both Arrow McLaren in IndyCar and Trackhouse Racing in NASCAR Cup, are powered by Chevrolet.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown: IndyCar must remain 'commercially viable' despite team's growth

Trackhouse Racing founder and owner Justin Marks has also long discussed the prospect of his flashy, upstart race team that’s almost as much a lifestyle brand and entertainment group as it is a successful motorsports program making inroads toward a 500 ride at some point down the road when the proper stars align. Marks launched Trackhouse entering the 2021 Cup series season, and later that summer, Trackhouse acquired the assets of Chip Ganassi Racing’s NASCAR Cup series program, helping expand the team into running two full-time Cup programs in 2022 and a third full-time in 2025.

Marks, who raced stock cars and sportscars at various levels before he transitioned into team ownership, has said previously that sitting in the grandstands and watching the 1995 Indy 500 helped spark his lifelong love for racing.

“It was really that moment that I knew that the racetrack was going to be home for me in some capacity my entire life,” Marks said in January in the wake of announcing Indy 500 legend Helio Castroneves for his team’s Project 91 Daytona 500 entry. “The Indianapolis 500 really cemented the passion for motorsports that I had and put me on a path to start thinking about it as a career.”

Despite his busy NASCAR schedule, Marks makes a point each May to visit IMS for a practice day to see Mike Shank, whom he once raced for in IMSA, as well as Chip Ganassi, whom Marks ran a handful of races for in Xfinity, as well as other paddock acquaintances.

“Certainly it’s a dream of mine to have Trackhouse represented in (the Indy 500). There are continuing discussions. It’s no small feat. It’s something that we’ve looked at as a company for a number of years, and I think when the time is right, we’ll take a real hard look at it,” Marks said.

“Obviously, we won’t be competing in the race in 2025, but there are discussions ongoing about how to make something like that happen. It’s very high on my personal list, and then I’ve got to get the business and commercial and partnerships and all that worked out, to figure out how to do it in a meaningful and competitive way. I don’t think that Trackhouse will ever be complete without us competing in the world’s greatest open-wheel race.”

Get IndyStar's motor sports coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Motor Sports newsletter.