NASCAR star Shane van Gisbergen has backed his young team-mate Connor Zilisch to work through his current struggles.

Zilisch, who has veered between the two roadblocks of poor performance and bad luck in his rookie Cup Series season, sitting 34th in the standings ahead of only Cody Ware among full-time drivers.

That is quite a come-down for a young driver who won ten races in the Xfinity Series last year only to miss out on the title, with a further ten finishes inside the top five in that record-breaking campaign.

Road course maestro Van Gisbergen played down any concerns about the teenager's development when speaking to the media at Sonoma this weekend though, pointing out that the jump to the top level of any sport is a huge shock to the system at such a young age.

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Van Gisbergen: Zilisch is a great team-mate

On his internal rivalry with his team-mate and fellow road course star, the New Zealander said: "Obviously, he's pretty frustrated, I guess, at the moment. The results aren't going his way and it seems to be one thing after another. Even yesterday in qualifying for O'Reilly, there's nothing you can do about stuff like that.

"But we all go through that stuff and I'm sure he'll be a factor today in the race and also qualifying today, too. It's going to work out for him. He's a great team-mate and it's been fun to see him pushing himself to get better.”

He added: “I mean, I went through a pretty similar thing last year. You come in expecting to do decent. Everyone in the Cup Series has won O’Reilly races. That's the level everyone's at. It's tough. Everyone in here is good.

"You jump in after you've been in good cars all through your junior career, and then you jump in the main series and it's a shock. I had it in Supercars when I was 18 years old.

"I did really well in all my junior formulas, and then I got into the main class and I was qualifying at the back. It's a rude awakening, but you got to push through it. I'm sure the second-half of his season will be good and he'll just keep at it. Things will start turning around for him.”

SVG: Social clip wasn't entirely truthful...

There was, however, one thing that Van Gisbergen took the chance to clear up about he and his team-mate's talents.

That was a video that Red Bull uploaded this week, in which some of their athletes were told to stop a timer – which they couldn't see – after exactly five seconds. Van Gisbergen tapped after 4.59 seconds, which Zilisch hit five on the dot.

But apparently, it wasn't that simple...

“One person had one go at that and one had five," the Kiwi laughed. "It was a bit of social media stuff. But yeah, we have a pretty friendly banter, Connor and I, and that relationship gets better and better. We drove up here together this week. He’s awesome.

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