NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Connor Zilisch won the race at Gateway and secured his regular-season title. But while celebrating his victory, he nearly ran over the cameraman. The footage of the near miss shows how close the scene was to turning into a disaster.
Zilisch has already experienced one incident while celebrating a race win in the Victory Lane at The Glen, which eventually required collarbone surgery for him to get racing again. Now, the victory celebration at Gateway could have ended tragically. A video of the near miss by The CW Sports on X received more than 8000 views.
It was likely that the 19-year-old driver did not see the cameraman. Fortunately, he stopped just in time and prevented a serious incident. The race marked Zilisch’s fourth consecutive win. Apart from him, only Sam Ard and Noah Gragson have won four Xfinity races in a row.
Related: Connor Zilisch Shares Surgery Update Following Scary Fall After Xfinity Series Win
Zilisch led the race at Gateway for 121 laps before crossing the checkered flag first. Speaking on achieving the feat of winning four races in a row, he said:
Chris Graythen/Getty Images
“Yeah, that one was stressful. Man, that’s awesome. Four in a row. I think that’s seven of the last eight for our WeatherTech Chevrolet team. … Yeah man, that’s awesome. Four in a row.
“Lot of fans here, it’s awesome to come here to St. Louis and bring the Xfinity Series back here. So, thank you guys for showing out tonight, and yeah, that’s awesome. We’re going to celebrate this, and the regular season championship.”
Zilisch added how every race result this season has been a surprise for him, and acknowledged the pressure of winning races consistently. He added:
“Man, this is going to be tough to keep up, honestly. It’s rare that you can go on a run like this, and every week I show up thinking, man, this is the weekend that we just go run 8th and just aren’t great.
“But every weekend, we show up and we’re a winning racecar, and my pit crew executes, my team executes and everybody does their job and we end up doing…
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