By David Morgan, Associate Editor
AVONDALE, Ariz. – The agony of defeat.
When a driver accumulates 10 wins over the course of a season, it would be reasonable to assume that driver should be the one to bring home the championship, but not in 2025 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
With the title coming down to a one race, winner take all format on Saturday night at Phoenix Raceway, the season wins leader Connor Zilisch would have to face off with two of his JR Motorsports teammates and his best friend, Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love to see which of them would hoist the championship trophy at night’s end.
Unfortunately for Zilisch, his night was uncharacteristically off as he struggled to find the handle on his No. 88 JRM Chevrolet and while he led 27 laps on the night, Love came to life in the closing stages of the race and with 25 laps to go, Zilisch could only watch as Love powered past him into the lead and set sail.
Zilisch would eventually fall to third behind Aric Almirola, with his only saving grace seemingly being late caution that never came. In the final rundown, he would finish nearly two seconds in arears of Love.
Climbing from his car on pit road afterward, Zilisch sat down next to it to collect his thoughts for a moment, clearly emotional in his season ending the way it had.
An owner and his driver after a hard-fought race. pic.twitter.com/jR2rBdzS5y
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) November 2, 2025
“You just work all year long, you bust your ass for 33 weeks. I feel like we’ve done the best job we could all year long. Yeah, we just didn’t have it today,” said Zilisch.
“I’m so proud of this team. We have nothing to hang our heads about. Yeah, this one’s going to sting.”
Zilisch added that at the end of the night, he just didn’t have the performance he quite needed to challenge when it mattered most.
“I felt like we were never the best car,” said Zilisch. “I feel like our pit crew did a really good job. We restart second. I got the lead from second both times. We lead for 10, 15 laps, every run we just tanked. I don’t know if I was pushing it too hard at the beginning of runs or what it was.
“After 20 laps, I just couldn’t hang on. Just started to lose lateral grip. Yeah, I don’t really know what we fought, but I feel like every run we were the second-best car. Whether it was Justin or Jesse, we just never were the best car.”
With the 2025 Xfinity season in the books, Zilisch is now headed off to the Cup Series with Trackhouse Racing, noting that while disappointing, this will only be a bump in the road in the overall scheme of his racing career.
“I’m excited for next year. It’s not going to light a fire under my ass to win a Cup championship next year,” said Zilisch.
“Man, I don’t have a NASCAR championship, so that’s something I definitely got to get in the future. Hopefully that will be a Cup championship one day. I’ll look back on this as a little tidbit and a little bump in the road. That’s something that I can be excited about, is next year.”
Fellow JRM teammates Justin Allgaier and Carson Kvapil also ended the night just short of the title, with Saturday marking the end of Allgaier’s reign as Xfinity Series champion. Allgaier would be credited with a fifth-place finish on the night, with Kvapil finishing the race in 13th.
“Really disappointing,” said Allgaier. “Jesse had come on there at the end of that run before the caution came out. It was really good. I knew that. I wanted to really have a good restart and be able to battle it out with him. Just didn’t work out.
“I’m bummed because I wanted to send Jim off with a championship. JR Motorsports as a whole, we didn’t win an owner or a driver championship with three out of the four. That’s super frustrating on my end, all of our ends.”
For Kvapil, while disappointed with the outcome, expressed his gratitude to his team at JRM for getting him to this point to where he could contend for a title in his first full-time season in the series.
“It wasn’t the way I wanted it to go, but I know these guys worked their tails off to try to bring me the best piece,” said Kvapil.
“…It just seemed like the other guys could gain on us. We couldn’t gain anything all race. Kind of what we had from lap one was kind of the same thing I had at lap 200, whereas the other guys — we passed the 2 car on the first run. I thought we were going to have a really good shot at it. Just didn’t seem like we could keep up with the track and keep up with changes.
“It’s just super. Super grateful to be in this position. Obviously not winning a race, sometimes you’re in, sometimes you’re out. Depends how the Playoffs go. I had a really enjoyable Playoff run with some great teammates.”
