Watkins Glen in August 2025 was a pressure cooker from the jump, with Trackhouse Racing’s Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen starting side-by-side on the front row. Zilisch, the 19-year-old prodigy, had already made The Glen his personal turf, dominating past races with JR Motorsports. SVG, the Kiwi road course wizard, turned heads with his 2023 Chicago Street Race win in his Cup debut, proving he could outmaneuver NASCAR’s best.
These weren’t just teammates, they were two of the sport’s top road racers, each itching to outshine the other. For most of the Mission 200 at The Glen, they put on a show, with Zilisch’s raw speed through the Esses matched by SVG’s surgical braking in the bus stop. But with just over a dozen laps to go, things got messy. Heading into Turn 7, they got caught in a three-wide tangle, sandwiched with the No. 21 car.
Zilisch held tight to the inside, SVG fought to stay outside, and then boom, contact. SVG’s No. 16 Camaro spun into the wall, ending his day in a cloud of sparks and disappointment. Zilisch, unfazed, drove on to win, but not before getting on the radio with a blunt, “If I wrecked him, tell me.” SVG kept it cool, telling reporters he was “pretty gutted” but needed to see the replay before pointing fingers.
The crash had fans buzzing, was it a racing deal or a reckless move? Whispers of a Trackhouse rift started swirling, but team owner Justin Marks stepped in to shut down the drama, setting the record straight on what really went down.
All is well, says Marks
On SiriusXM, Justin Marks didn’t mince words, tackling the rumors head-on. “You know what’s great about Shane is that… there’s not a lot of emotion there with him. It’s like, okay, that’s not what I wanted to happen, but let’s understand… Why did that happen? Is it something I could have done different? Is it something Connor could have done differently? … Shane went and looked at it, Connor went and looked at it.”
Marks highlighted SVG’s calm, analytical approach, a hallmark of his three-time Supercars championship pedigree. Instead of blowing up, both drivers hit the garage to pore over video and data, much like SVG did after his Chicago win, breaking down moves corner-by-corner. It’s a stark contrast to the hot-headed radio rants some drivers lean into, showing Trackhouse’s focus on fixing problems, not fueling feuds.
Marks praised Zilisch’s maturity, too, “Obviously Connor was thinking about it the rest of the race… he got on the radio for the team to just be honest with him… don’t tell me it’s not my fault just to keep my motivations high, like, tell me what happened so I… have an understanding of the situation.”
“Everything is fine between the two of them, everything is fine within the team.”@JustinMarksTH discusses the contact between teammates @ConnorZilisch and @shanevg97 in Saturday’s @NASCAR_Xfinity race @WGI.
More https://t.co/WGRTG5gnEd pic.twitter.com/3BZhliYnNv
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) August 13, 2025
For a rookie, Zilisch’s demand for truth over comfort was something else. It echoed his Road America debrief earlier this season, where he owned a Turn 5 mistake without excuses. Even with the crash weighing on him, he led 60 of 82 laps at Watkins Glen for his sixth Xfinity win of 2025, only to fracture his collarbone in a Victory Lane fall, sidelining him for the next day’s Cup race. That kind of grit and focus at 19 is why Marks sees him as a cornerstone.
He put the rumors to bed with a clear take, “Everything was handled right… I think it was kind of a racing incident. You could say Shane didn’t leave room… you could also say they were three-wide and jumbled up and Connor could have lifted… I don’t think there’s a lot of blame… everything’s fine between the two of them, everything’s fine within the team.”
Marks nailed the chaos of three-wide racing at Watkins Glen’s bus stop, a corner notorious for trouble, like the 2022 Xfinity race at Indy where a similar pileup left no clear villain. With Trackhouse juggling veterans and young stars, Marks’ quick resolution keeps the team’s chemistry tight as the playoffs loom, proving there’s no rift, just racers learning on the fly.
Another crash victim speaks
While Trackhouse sorted its drama, Carson Hocevar was dealing with his own Watkins Glen fallout. In a media session, he opened up about a run-in with Michael McDowell that spun him out, saying, “He suggested sitting down this weekend at Richmond to discuss it.”
Hocevar felt the contact, whether a mistake or misjudgment, was fair game to race hard for position later, especially since it impacted Richmond’s qualifying order, where starting spot is huge. “It was plenty OK to race really hard for the position at the end,” he said, showing the no-hard-feelings vibe that often follows on-track scraps.
Hocevar also addressed a qualifying spat with Brad Keselowski: “I’m not sure why he was so upset… I was upset with Keselowski first.” He felt Keselowski messed up his lap by letting him go in a bad spot, so he returned the favor on the cool-down lap, staying in line and forcing Keselowski to pass. “Emotions were high,” Hocevar admitted, acknowledging the tit-for-tat but keeping it civil.
Then there was his earlier Iowa incident with Zane Smith, “I knew his tolerance level was going to be low… if I could give that back in a spot that wasn’t going to cost me anything, hopefully that mends a little bit of their race car getting wrecked, which wasn’t intentional.” Hocevar’s trying to smooth things over, much like Marks did with Zilisch and SVG, showing that in NASCAR, collisions don’t have to mean grudges, just a chance to talk it out and keep racing.
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