Polewinner Connor Zilisch Leads Every Lap for the Second Race in a Row at Team’s Beloved Home Track – VIR

Overview

Date: Oct. 8, 2023

Event: VIR SpeedTour (Round 12 of 13)

Series: Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli

Division: Big Machine Vodka Spiked Coolers TA2 Series

Location: Virginia International Raceway in Alton

Layout: 3.27-mile, 17-turn road course

Format: 30 laps or 75 minutes

Weather: Sunny, low-60s

Winner: Connor Zilisch of Silver Hare Racing

Silver Hare Racing:

  • Connor Zilisch – Started 1st, Finished 1st (Running, completed 30/30 laps)

Noteworthy:

  • Zilisch started on the pole for the fourth time this season and the third race in a row and led all 30 laps of the race. He duplicated his feat from Sept. 24 at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis, where he led all 61 TA2-class laps from pole to checkered flag.
  • This was Zilisch’s fifth win of the season and his second straight. His victory tally began March 26 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta and continued June 4 on the downtown streets of Detroit, Aug. 5 in downtown Nashville, Sept. 24 at St. Louis and today at VIR.
  • Zilisch’s lap of 1 minute, 49.934 seconds earned him the Omalagato Fastest Lap of the Race Award.
  • Saturday, Zilisch made his TA-class debut at VIR driving the No. 7 Franklin Road Apparel/Silver Hare Racing Chevrolet Camaro for Showtime Motorsports. He also qualified on the pole and led every lap of that race to become the youngest winner in TA-class history.
  • Zilisch’s sweep of the VIR race weekend put the 17-year-old in a class of his own. Prior to today, no driver in Trans Am history had won two races in different classes in a single weekend.

Connor Zilisch, Driver, No. 7 Silver Hare Racing/Carter Bank Chevrolet Camaro:

“I want to thank my whole, entire team, Silver Hare Racing. They’ve worked so hard to give me fast cars every week we come to the track, and it’s showed the last several times we’ve been here. It means a lot to be racing for this team. Maurice and Laura Hull gave me this opportunity to come out here and race. My family has given me this chance – my mom and dad always support me. Carter Bank and Trust for being on the car this weekend, local company helping us out and helping us get to the track. It just feels good to win for the fifth time this year. It’s pretty special to have this good of a year. We’ll go to COTA with a chance to win. We’re out of the championship hunt, so we can’t win the championship but there’s still another race to win. We’ll go there with that goal. And I can’t ask for much better of a weekend than winning both features and winning both poles.”

Maurice Hull, Co-Owner, Silver Hare Racing:

“What a sweep, and it was all in front of family and friends, which is wonderful. Connor is just an amazing driver. He did a wonderful job, and we’ve got a stellar crew. Gil (Martin, competition director) has got it running perfectly. It’s teamwork, just great, great teamwork, and Laura and I are just extremely proud to be associated with this group of people – first class. It was a wonderful weekend. It was a rocky road getting to this point, so all the good things that have happened these last several races has been well-deserved, hard-earned. It was like the race today, there were a lot of full-course cautions in the path of this win. So there were a lot of restarted that we had to navigate, not only in the race, but in the last six months of this year for this team. It’s been very gratifying to get to where we are today. A lot of people have been working very hard.”

Next Up

The 2023 Big Machine Vodka Spiked Coolers TA2 Series season concludes four weeks hence with the Mission Foods Austin SpeedTour Nov. 3-5 at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. The weekend kicks off with a pair of 20-minute TA2 test sessions at 11:15 a.m. and 5:05 p.m. CDT Friday, Nov. 3. Official TA2 practice is set for 11:05 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, followed by qualifying at 3:10 p.m. Sunday’s 30-lap, 75-minute TA2 race begins at 9 a.m. CST with live television coverage provided by MAVTV, augmented by live-streaming video coverage by the Trans Am Series and SpeedTourTV channels on YouTube.

-SilverHareRacing-