Trackhouse Racing owner Justin Marks has admitted that Connor Zilisch's future with the team is up in the air after next season.
Zilisch is tied to the three-car operation through the end of 2027, but will be out of contract after that. Unsurprisingly, the 20-year-old is already in high demand as teams look to position themselves for a future move.
Hendrick Motorsports seems like a possible – even likely – home for him from 2028 onward, with Alex Bowman announcing last week that he will be ending his NASCAR career after 2027.
That leaves the team searching for a new driver for the No. 48, on exactly the timeline on which Zilisch would become available. Couple that with Bowman all-but saying that he agreed to stay on for 2027 in order to help his team transition into the future, and the breadcrumb trail is laid out fairly clearly.
Marks said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Monday that he isn't thinking too much about Zilisch's future beyond 2027 yet, but did concede that his young driver is 'highly sought-after'.
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Marks: 2028 is too far away to think much about
"He's probably coveted for everybody," Marks said. "He's a very talented driver, he's a very smart young man, he's got a big career in front of him. We're committed to Connor, Connor's committed to us through the end of 2027.
"2028, although it'll be here quickly, is a little too far away for us to really be spending a lot of bandwidth on that at the moment. What we're trying to solve right now is to get him the experience, get him comfortable, we've got a great relationship with Red Bull and and a lot of our other partners on the Chevrolet that he drives, and it's important for us to be executing on the agreement and relationship and partnership that we have now.
"I think that it's on Trackhouse to continue to work really really hard to try to give him good racecars. It's on him to continue to do the work to be prepared and show up and be the best racecar driver that he can be. 2027 can be a really big year for him and for us, he's go a whole year under his belt and he can do to all these races for the second time, or third or fourth time and really know what he's up again.
"I say all that to say that's really where our mind is at right now. When it comes time to talk about the future, we'll have that conversation with him, knowing that he's a highly sought-after driver.
"I think that those conversations around him probably want to start sooner rather than later, and it's our job to present ourselves as a place that he wants to be. If that happens and he's at Trackhouse for a while into the future, great. If something different happens, then that's the way it goes."
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