Hendrick Motorsports has agreed with Connor Zilisch on a multi-year contract to drive the No. 48 Chevrolet with Ally sponsorship starting in 2028, the year Alex Bowman will retire from full-time competition in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Photo By Carlos Castillo
The car Zilisch will drive carries a particular history within Hendrick Motorsports. Jimmie Johnson drove it to seven championships and 83 wins before retiring, Bowman took over the car in 2021, and now becomes the second driver to leave it since Johnson made it his own. Bowman announced three weeks ago that 2027 will be his last full-time season in Cup; injuries and vertigo episodes that sidelined him from four races this season accelerated the retirement.
The deal also extends the relationship between Ally Financial and the No. 48 car, which will reach ten years as primary sponsor in 2028. Zilisch, who is twenty years old and from Charlotte, North Carolina, will race two more seasons with Trackhouse before the move, the same span in which Bowman will run his final races with Hendrick Motorsports, the organization with the most championships and most wins in Cup Series history.
Photo By Carlos Castillo
Those two transition seasons are no small detail. Zilisch moved up to Cup with Trackhouse in 2026 to replace Daniel Suárez, and the season has proven more challenging than his Xfinity tenure. In twenty-four races, he has one top ten, eight DNFs, and an average starting position outside the top twenty—numbers that show the gap between running in Xfinity and racing against the best in the premier series.
That gap contrasts with what he left behind in Xfinity just a year earlier. With JR Motorsports in 2025, Zilisch recorded ten wins, eight poles, and a record streak of eighteen consecutive top-five finishes. He won the regular-season championship and rookie of the year honors, though the series' playoff format left the title decider for the final rounds and he finished runner-up. In August of that year, after winning for the second consecutive time at Watkins Glen, he fractured his collarbone when he lost his balance on top of the car during the victory lane celebration, an injury that sidelined him from his scheduled Cup debut with Trackhouse the following day.
Photo By Carlos Castillo
The path to that point started much earlier. Zilisch has been racing karts since he was five years old, and by 2017, at just eleven, he had already won the Mini Rok World Championship in Italy against over 160 drivers from 33 countries. In 2020, he became the first American to win the CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy, before moving to cars in 2021 with Spec Miata, Mazda MX-5 Cup, and Trans Am. In 2024, already part of the Trackhouse Racing development program, he won five of eight ARCA races and made his Xfinity debut with JR Motorsports at Watkins Glen, where he won that very race.
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Drivers Standings 2026
| POS | PILOTO | PTS | ↕ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kyle Larson | 2318 | |
| 2 | Denny Hamlin | 2278 | |
| 3 | Christopher Bell | 2263 | |
| 4 | Joey Logano | 2247 | |
| 5 | Ryan Blaney | 2238 | |
| 6 | Chase Briscoe | 2234 | arrow_up2 |
| 7 | Tyler Reddick | 2212 | |
| 8 | Ty Gibbs | 2208 | arrow_down2 |
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