Connor Zilisch claimed his third straight Watkins Glen Xfinity win on Saturday with a stunning final-corner pass on Jesse Love, completing a comeback drive that briefly looked beyond him with two laps to go.
The 19-year-old, racing the JR Motorsports number 1 Chevrolet, broke Love's heart at the final right-hander after building speed for several laps and capitalising on a half-second lock-up by the points leader.
"Drag race to the finish. Connor Zilisch, three in a row, and gets Glen," the broadcast called as the JRM driver burst alongside the Richard Childress Racing entry on the run to the line.
The race had looked like Love's to lose. Starting from the front row alongside team-mate Justin Allgaier, he absorbed an early move from Sam Mayer and held station as Zilisch carved his way through the field from a deeper grid slot. The decisive sequence began on the white-flag lap, with Love on tyres that were giving up under the cold-weather degradation that has dominated the Watkins Glen weekend.
"He's made up about four-tenths," the broadcast explained as Zilisch began chipping into the gap. "Look at the breaking zone right there. What a huge charge into the corner on the entry. Really pushing the limit."
The last-lap sequence delivered exactly the kind of finish road racing fans expect at The Glen. Zilisch hung on through traffic, navigated a lap car cleanly through the bus stop and arrived at the final braking zone within reach of Love's rear wing. The 18-year-old defended hard but locked up just enough on entry to leave the door slightly ajar.
"Love is almost going to have to get on the defensive mode here," the broadcast said. "How late do you dare break if you're Jesse Love? He's going to have to defend a little bit here into the last turn. Zilisch is there. Oh, he overcooked it. Connor to the inside."
"He needed to just get to the point where he almost crowded the one of Connor to not let him have a full exit," the broadcast suggested in post-race analysis. "They would have possibly connected, but you had a better chance just missing the corner."
The result is the 13th career Xfinity win for Zilisch, who has now won seven of his ten road course starts in the series and three consecutive races at Watkins Glen. It is also his second victory of 2026, following an earlier strategy-fuelled win at Bristol where he held off a similar late charge.
The defeat is a tough one for Love, who is enjoying a breakout season at RCR. He arrived at Watkins Glen with four consecutive top-five finishes and was knocking on the door of a chase position despite missing four events earlier in the year.
For Zilisch, the win also adds important context to Saturday's Cup Series qualifying, where Trackhouse's Shane van Gisbergen earned pole and immediately invoked Zilisch as proof that even small mistakes could be ruinous in Sunday's Cup race.
"Connor made a mistake and just got half a car wide in the marbles, and then he lost three seconds for the next few laps," Van Gisbergen told reporters of the previous day's Truck race, in which Zilisch was outdrafted to second.
Zilisch will be hoping for one more Glen miracle when the Cup Series goes green on Sunday.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/connor-zilisch-watkins-glen-three-peat-jesse-love-xfinity-2026). Visit for full coverage.*