The NASCAR Cup Series season is usually between the Daytona 500 in February to the Championship Race at the Phoenix Raceway in November. However, this season has been marred by discussion over the Playoff format. This is the format in which the lowest four drivers in points get eliminated for three rounds, until the main championship race every year in which the top four drivers after these three rounds fight for a championship, and instead replace it with full season points. In the middle of all this discussion, there has been a rising prodigy in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, by the name of Connor Zilisch. Zilisch started his racing career in karting at the age of 5, and after almost a decade, and catching the attention of NASCAR legends like the 2014 NASCAR (then known as) Sprint Cup Series Champion Kevin Harvick, won the FIA Karting Academy Trophy in 2020 at the age of 14. Over the next few years, Zilisch bounced around different series in the US like the IMSA SportsCar Championship, where he won the Rolex 24 as part of the LMP2 classification, which is the second fastest car of the 4 classes in IMSA. After this he became a part time road course racer in NASCAR in 2024, even winning in his first ever NASCAR Xfinity Series start at Watkins Glen International, getting offered the JR Motorsports 88 in the Xfinity Series full time for the 2025 season. So far this season, he currently has 10 wins, 18 top fives, and 20 top 10’s, and has been on a fifteen race top 5 streak since his back injury on the last lap at the AgPro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway. Ultimately, this allowed him to be offered a full time ride in the NASCAR Cup Series for this upcoming season in the third Trackhouse Racing car, with the number that he will drive to be announced. Connor was actually supposed to go to college, but his dad was persuaded by Harvick to have Connor keep racing. In an August 2025 press interview at the Daytona International Speedway on his new Trackhouse Racing car, Connor said how “Kevin Harvick asked my dad ‘What’s your plan for this kid?’ and my dad was like ‘Well he’s going to race for another year or two and then he’s going to college,’ and how Kevin told my dad “You can’t do that.’” After this, Zilisch’s dad was convinced not to send Connor to college, and instead let him race further. Since Connor has been so dominant in the Xfinity Series, many use his season as a reason to not support the playoff format, and instead, full season points.