Connor Zilisch reveals how European stint helped him at NASCAR race...after eating horse by mistake

Connor Zilisch has revealed how his early teenage years in Europe helped him in an unexpected way at NASCAR's weekend in Mexico City this year.

The 19-year-old star spent some time racing across the pond in his younger years, being based in Italy and taking on drivers who have since gone on to compete in F1.

Connor Zilisch has revealed how his early teenage years in Europe helped him in an unexpected way at NASCAR's weekend in Mexico City this year.

However, it wasn't the racing skills which proved useful in Mexico, but the language proficiency he picked up. And before you get in the comments – yes, GPFans is aware that Italian isn't the predominant language in Mexico.

Speaking to Fox's Bob Pockrass, Zilisch revealed that he could 'almost fluently understand Italian' when he moved back stateside, and claimed that Italian and Spanish are similar enough languages that he could understand a surprising amount of what was going on in Mexico.

However, he didn't pick up Italian quickly enough to avoid one tricky day at a restaurant...

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Zilisch reveals restaurant experiences

"When I was over there, I could almost fluently understand Italian," the newly-minted full-time Cup Series driver explained. "I could pick out words and I could get by, by the time I was done over there. I couldn't speak it very well. But when we were in Mexico City [to race earlier this year], Italian and Spanish are very similar. And I'd go to dinner or something with Jesse [Love], and he was shocked at how much I could understand.

"And people would speak to us in Spanish, and I could understand what they were saying a good bit. It's gone away in the past few years. But I feel like that's one thing that I picked up that is pretty cool is just being able to understand that kind of language and the things that you learn and pick up on when you're traveling the world as a kid."

However, he revealed: "There was one time I ordered cavallo, which I didn't know is horse. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't translate it. I kind of just ordered it because they said it was good. And later come to find out it was horse, which is something that they eat over there.

"And I actually enjoyed it, but I never ordered it again, because I ... I see horses, and I don't think of them as food. So that's probably one of the things that I didn't know what I was getting myself into. But I found out."

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