Zilisch Breaks Love's Heart On Final Lap At Watkins Glen

Connor Zilisch and Jesse Love may be best friends, but the two drivers have delivered some heartbreaking blows to one another over the last year.

Last November, Love defeated Zilisch in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series Championship Race, shocking the JR Motorsports driver by scoring the series championship. Zilisch was the overwhelming favorite to take the title, as he had dominated the series that season.

On Saturday afternoon at Watkins Glen International, it was Zilisch's turn to crush Love. On the final turn of the final lap, Zilisch would make a pass on Love for the win in Saturday's NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series Mission 200 at The Glen.

Love, who had taken the lead late in the race due to a fuel strategy played by his crew chief, Danny Stockman Jr., had seen a 15-plus second lead evaporate over the final 19 laps of the race. Despite a hard-charging Zilisch bearing down on him, it looked like Love would still pull through for his first win of the season.

Until he made a grave mistake in the race's final turn.

“When you really nickel and dime it, right, there’s a hundred little small mistakes that let him get close," an emotional Love explained after the race. "At the end of the day, the glaring piece of it is that I had a bad corner. I had a bad corner.”

Whether Love slipped out of the groove in the final turn because he was worried about contact from Zilisch for the win, or if he simply tried too hard on severely aged tires, Zilisch said, regardless, he wasn't going to initiate contact for the win. He wanted to pass his friend cleanly.

“I wasn’t going to move Jesse in that last corner, there, but he got in deep, and I was able to get by,” Zilisch said.

The win is Zilisch's 13th career victory in NASCAR's second-tier series, and it's his third-consecutive NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series win at Watkins Glen International, a track, where Zilisch broke his collarbone a season ago, while attempting to climb from his car in victory lane following a win in this race.

Zilisch had no issues in victory lane on Saturday afternoon, and his NASCAR Cup Series team owner, Justin Marks, brought a thick cushion and placed it in the landing position for Zilisch, just in case.

After another big-time win in the O'Reilly Series, Zilisch, who has had a dismal start to his rookie campaign in the NASCAR Cup Series, will look to score his first career win in NASCAR's top divison in Sunday's Go Bowling at The Glen.

Zilisch will start from the fifth position in Sunday's race.

Taylor Gray secured a third-place finish in Saturday's O'Reilly Series event, although he was more than 13 seconds behind the battle for the race win.

Gray was followed across the finish line by Ross Chastain, a NASCAR Cup Series full-time driver, and Brandon Jones, who saw his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota come to life in the closing laps of the event.

18-year-old Brent Crews had another impressive outing, as he led a race-high 32 laps, and scored the Stage 1 win. However, on the final pit stop of the day, his pit crew failed him with a 21-second pit stop, which put him behind Zilisch on track.

That slow pit stop paired with an intense vibration in his car on the final run of the race caused Crews to fade to a sixth-place finish. Still, the run was enough to move Crews, who missed four races early in the season due to not being old enough to compete, into the top-12 of the championship standings.

With a 10th-place finish in Saturday's race at Watkins Glen, Justin Allgaier was able to maintain is healthy series points lead. Allgaier now holds a 155-point advantage over Sheldon Creed, who finished 29th after flying into the air after an excursion through the bus stop grass.

Love, after his runner-up finish, sits 161 points back in third in the standings.

Mission 200 at The Glen Race Results

1. 1-Connor Zilisch (i) (S2)
2. 2-Jesse Love
3. 54-Taylor Gray
4. 32-Ross Chastain (i)
5. 20-Brandon Jones
6. 19-Brent Crews # (S1) (X)
7. 99-Parker Retzlaff
8. 9-Shane van Gisbergen (i)
9. 87-Austin Green
10. 7-Justin Allgaier
11. 21-Austin Hill
12. 88-Rajah Caruth
13. 41-Sam Mayer
14. 91-Carson Kvapil
15. 17-Corey Day
16. 8-Sammy Smith
17. 24-Harrison Burton
18. 44-Brennan Poole
19. 0-Alex Labbe
20. 42-Will Rodgers
21. 50-Preston Pardus
22. 07-Josh Bilicki
23. 39-Ryan Sieg
24. 96-Anthony Alfredo
25. 27-Jeb Burton
26. 31-Blaine Perkins
27. 45-Lavar Scott #
28. 92-Alex Guenette
29. 00-Sheldon Creed
30. 55-Glen Reen
31. 28-Kyle Sieg
32. 53-Derek White
33. 51-Jeremy Clements
34. 02-Ryan Ellis
35. 26-Dean Thompson
36. 18-William Sawalich
37. 35-Matt Wilson
38. 48-Patrick Staropoli #

(S1) Stage 1 winner
(S2) Stage 2 winner
(X) Xfinity Fastest Lap
# Rookie of the Year contender
(i) Driver ineligible to score series points

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