Will Trackhouse Racing Be a Breakout Team in 2026?
A new face and new numbers will headline Trackhouse Racing in 2026. Returning to the team are 2022 Championship Four competitor Ross Chastain in the Chevrolet car and Shane Van Gisbergen, who will switch from the No. 88 to the No. 97. Connor Zilisch will join the team and will pilot the No. 88. He replaces Daniel Suarez, who drove the No. 99 in 2025 and will join Spire Motorsports in 2026. Van Gisbergen won Rookie of the Year in the Cup Series with five road course wins and finished in the top-12 in points. Zilisch was the Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year with 10 wins and was just short of capturing the series title, which was won by Jesse Love. The team won a season-high six races in 2025 and will look to increase that total in 2026.
Ross Chastain
Chastain has been quite the polarizing character and the winningest driver at Trackhouse during his time with the team. In 2022, his move at Martinsville, later dubbed the “Hail Melon,” locked him into the Championship Four that season, one where he won the first two races of his career. That first win at Circuit of the Americas saw him bring his celebration, where he smashes a watermelon from the top of his car to the Cup Series. Chastain won two races in 2023 and grabbed one win in 2024 and 2025, giving him six in his career, all with Trackhouse. Chastain had 12 top-10s in 2025, leading the team, and will aim to build on that next year.
Shane Van Gisbergen
The Kiwi first broke onto the NASCAR scene in 2023, when he won the inaugural Chicago Street Course race in his first career start. 2025 was his first full-time season at the Cup level, and his road course background took center stage once again. He won five road courses of the six in the season to clinch a playoff spot and Rookie of the Year honors. In the last 10 oval races of the year, he recorded four top-20s, led laps at Daytona, and scored his first-career top-10 on an oval at Kansas. If he continues to improve, Van Gisbergen may be a real threat to make a deep playoff run, assuming he grabs a few road course wins again. Van Gisbergen will sport a new number in 2026, one that has followed him since the beginning of his racing career. He will drive the No. 97, which he had during his V8 Supercar days in Australia and in 2024 when he was full-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Connor Zilisch
Zilisch had one of the craziest NASCAR Xfinity Series seasons ever in 2025. He broke his back at Talladega and broke his collarbone after slipping on the window net of his car in victory lane at Watkins Glen months later. Still, Zilisch found victory lane 10 times, a series-high for a rookie. He had a stretch of 18 top-10s in a row to set a series record. In the middle of that stretch, he won seven races in an eight-race span. He found victory lane in nine of those 18 races. Unfortunately for Zilisch, it did not culminate in the series championship. Heading to 2026, Zilisch brings some Cup Series experience as he made three starts at Circuit of the Americas, Charlotte, and Atlanta. He enters as the favorite to win Cup Series Rookie of the Year, an award Trackhouse Racing will look to win for the second year in a row.
