Connor Zilisch earned the Motul Pole Award in his first-career TA class start in the Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli at VIRginia International Raceway, laying down a lap time of 1m41.692s in the No. 7 Franklin Road Apparel/Silver Hare Racing Chevrolet Camaro. Zilisch achieved a similar feat two years ago, surprising the garage when he won the pole in his Big Machine Vodka SPIKED Coolers TA2 Series debut at the same Virginia road course.
“[Running in TA] has been a super enjoyable experience,” said Zilisch. “I’m very fortunate that Maurice and Laura Hull, Ken Thwaits and GM got together to give me this opportunity to race this car at VIR. It’s one of my favorite tracks, and to come here and just kind of dominate so far this weekend is special. We were the fastest car in every session other than the first test. Every session, I’m getting more acclimated to the car, figuring it out and understanding what I need from the car. I feel like we’ve got a really good baseline going into the race tomorrow. We’re going to make a few adjustments to hopefully make it better on race runs and give me a little more confidence going into the race, but I think we have a really good piece going into tomorrow.”
The TA/XGT/SGT/GT race will be contested on Saturday, October 7 at 11:45 a.m. ET. The race will be broadcast live on MAVTV and streamed live here. The TV broadcast replay of the race will air on MAVTV on Thursday, October 12 at 9:00 p.m. ET.