Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to 'unprecedented' Connor Zilisch NASCAR run, cites Kyle Busch

You don’t get much hotter than Connor Zilisch right now in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. With his victory in this past Saturday’s race at Gateway, the 19-year-old has won eight of his last 11 starts.

Zilisch isn’t the first driver to dominate Xfinity competition, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. views what he’s doing as “unprecedented.” The only other driver Earnhardt is willing to put up next to Zilisch is Kyle Busch, a 102-time winner in Xfinity.

“What Connor’s just doing is unprecedented,” Earnhardt said on Tuesday’s Dale Jr. Download. “When you look back in the history of the Xfinity Series, there really aren’t a lot of guys that were doing this. Kyle Busch was doing this, but he had already become a regular Cup winner.”

Busch is the all-time wins leader in Xfinity history. His 13 wins in 2010 are the most in a single season. By then, Busch was already a regular in the Cup Series. This is Zilisch’s rookie season, and he’s already the class of the field.

Zilisch, with nine wins in 2025, is four away from tying Busch for the single-season record. Seven races remain with the playoffs getting underway this Friday at Bristol.

Connor Zilisch chasing Xfinity Series title in rookie season

For the past few months, drivers have been showing up to the racetrack to compete for second. That was once the Busch effect; now, it’s the Zilisch effect.

“I don’t even know that Brad [Keselowski] was winning races like this. … What’s Connor done, like, eight wins out of the last 11? … I think Brad was absolutely dominant, but I only think one other person has done what Connor is doing and that was Kyle Busch,” Earnhardt said. “Kyle could get in that car — I think Gibbs won 20 races one year — every time Kyle showed up, he won. He didn’t run every race, but every race he did run, he won. That’s what Connor Zilisch is right now. … The only thing similar I can say is the Kyle Busch run, when Kyle could run all the races.

“Carl Edwards was close, Brad was close, but I don’t really remember them being as annoying as Kyle was. I was an owner in the series during all of those times, and when Kyle was winning all those races and he would come, we knew we weren’t gonna race for wins. I only put Kyle Busch up there by himself because I look at the bottom dollar and go, well, at the end of the season, that’s a $400,000 swing or a $200,000 swing from winning races to running second or third and battling for top 5s. Kyle Busch, man, he was such a nuisance — and I mean that in the most complimentary way.”