Don't let a wild ride fool you; NASCAR journeyman Parker Kligerman has plenty in the tank
Parker Kligerman has been around so long and the trajectory of his racing career is so dizzying it’s easy to forget he’s only 32.
This is a driver who in 2008 slipped out of a high school class under the guise of needing to use the bathroom so he could take a call from Penske Racing to test a NASCAR Cup car. Racing stock cars came easy to the kid from Westport, Connecticut – decidedly not stock car country – and at 19 he was a rising star who won nearly half the ARCA races in his rookie season.
It just didn’t stay easy.
Since then, Kligerman has raced for 16 teams across NASCAR’s three national divisions – six in the Craftsman Truck Series, seven in the Xfinity Series and three in Cup – for a total of 220 starts with three truck victories to show for it.
But for the first time in a decade and just the second in his 15-year NASCAR career, Kligerman is racing full time again, this time in the Xfinity Series, helping to build record executive and racing enthusiast Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Racing, while moonlighting as a reporter for NASCAR on NBC broadcasts.
Kligerman is 12th in points with three top-five finishes going into Saturday’s Road America 180 in Elkhart Lake. In a 40-minute conversation this week, Kligerman spoke about his journey, keeping his career alive through television, building a brand, his hopes for the weekend and more this week. Here are excerpts:
Q: This place comes up with a lot of unexpected winners, first-time winners. You got a third there 10 years ago (best Xfinity finish). Are you one of the dark horses?
Kligerman: I think we would be one of the favorites just for our road course performance this year and obviously my road course history and that sort of thing and this being one of my favorite racetracks in the world.
I’ve always paid attention to it from being a young fan, watching CART there and always thinking it would be a cool place for NASCAR to go, and I got to be a spotter the first time NASCAR came there and got to do some laps for Penske. I just remember thinking that was so cool and now I’ve gotten to be there many times on the broadcast side and raced there multiple times. I can’t wait to get there and win this weekend.
Q: What would that do for you guys?
Kligerman: It’d be huge. … I think with seven races to go we’ll still point our way in regardless. ... Winning makes it easy, and there’s no doubt in my mind – literally none – that we can’t go out there and just win this race. Lead practice, sit on the pole and win the race.
I have that level of confidence, and it would be huge for us and it would be something that would set us up very well to focus on the playoffs and to continue building this young race team into the powerhouse it deserves to be.
Q: Let’s back up that 10 years to that third-place finish. What do you remember about that one?
Kligerman: I remember it vividly. I was at KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) and we were fast. It was a little wet in practice and we were P1. I love the rain.
Then we qualified I believe third and ran in the top five most of that race, got shoved off while leading and had to fight our way back to finish third and on a late-race restart had a shot at AJ (Allmendinger) and (Justin) Allgaier for first and second but just couldn’t execute the pass. It was a day where I believe if we don’t get shoved off we’re in a position to go win.
And then I raced there in 2016 in an underfunded car (Precision Performance Motorsports) and had a top-10, I think their only top-10. That car had no brakes, the shifter broke, the mirror fell off. And I still got the thing in the top 10 and was running people down in the top five.
Winning at Road America for me, 10-year-old me, 11-year-old me would be so damn proud. It’s just a place I idolized and thought, wow, real race car drivers win at Road America and do big things there and go fast.
Q: You had a truck win and a bunch of top-fives with Brad Keselowski and Red Horse, but did that third seem like it could have been important in terms of knocking on the door at the next level?
Kligerman: We were really competitive in an era that l had a lot of Cup teams and Cup drivers in the Xfinity Series. And if you look at that season and removed the Cup drivers – that we’re not allowed to have now – we probably win … I think there’s a couple races we’re the top-finishing Xfinity driver and would have dominated.
When you look at that year, if we had the playoff system we have, I believe we would have finished second in the championship behind Trevor Bayne. Although we finished ninth in the points, three points behind (Kyle) Larson, we had a really good year.
I felt like I was obviously very competitive with Kyle Larson, who got a lot of fanfare at the time and any of my contemporaries at the time who got opportunities, who got into solid Cup rides but I just didn’t get that chance. I think though obviously if I had found a way to win it would be different, but we didn’t. It was a very competitive year but we did everything but win. At the end of the day, winning is really important in this game.
Yes, third was important and I think it was our best finish of the year, but I can’t say one way or another whether it would have got me to Cup or not, but it’s a nice memory at least.
Q: Road America in 16 NASCAR races has had 16 different winners, including a fair number of unexpected ones. It seems like it’s been a pretty unpredictable place. Any thoughts on why?
Kligerman: I think it happens because of the nature of the racetrack. Prior to this repave there was an immense amount of tire falloff, probably the highest of the season, and such a long track that could warrant itself to interesting strategies, especially with full-course cautions that happen in NASCAR with the cars getting beached (in gravel traps) very easily.
Long straightaways and long braking zones … NASCAR stock cars, at least in the Xfinity Series, don’t like to stop. So that really tests the mechanical components of the race cars.
So I think all those things combined have really put it in a position where you can have a lot of strategy turnover in terms of the running positions and thereby provide opportunity for unexpected winners and that sort of thing.
Looking ahead with the repave, it’s a bit of an unknown, right? We don’t know what speed it could have, the lack of tire falloff. This could be an entirely different Road America from the past. Or it could be very similar. We’ll find out together.
Q: Describe the Big Machine team. Young? Small?
Kligerman: I think the best description is young. That’s not age, it’s just the time the organization’s been around.
There’s a lot of things behind the scenes we just slowly build into processes and systems and evolving. Those are tough things to describe to the outside world and sometimes you won’t even see the results. Sometimes it’s just us realizing how much smoother our weekends are going.
We have to remember we are young, we’re going up against Joe Gibbs Racing, JR Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing, Stewart Haas Racing, Kaulig, who’s running the same car as us but doing it for six years or whatever it is. We can’t expect to waltz in there and beat them all at their own game (immediately). I believe we have the skill and talent and the drive to do that.
And I truly believe there’s a lot of things we’ve worked on that when we get in the playoffs will potentially make us a threat that people didn’t perceive. But they don’t see what we’re working on, there’s no way for them to know but I see them and our team sees them and I know those things are going to pay off.
Q: If the 32-year-old you could go back in time and tell the 18-year-old what the journey was going to be like, what would that kid have said?
Kligerman: My first thing would be he would be a little disappointed about how it turned out for many of those years. But he also would be proud that I’m still doing it and I’m fighting this fight and trying to win races and be successful at this level.
If I could tell 18-year-old me anything, it would be to relax, it would to be work on your work ethic and continue your goal to be better.
I’ve had such a unique path, but with that I’ve learned so many things and been able to be involved in so many things. … Because of those experiences it’s made me a more well-rounded person that has interests outside of driving, which 18-year-old me didn’t have.
This is my No. 1 passion and my No. 1 focus and goal right now, but I’m grateful to know there are other things in the world I’ve got skills in and knowledge in and could pursue one day when the time is right.
Q: You said you would advise your younger self about work ethic. I’m seeing you racing cars, on TV, very active on social media and you’ve got the podcast … (and) you’ve done a great job of building a brand. I find it hard to believe you lacked work ethic.
Kligerman: Through the TV side, I’ve been able to see young drivers rise through the ranks – I’ve watched Tyler Reddick come through – and at times their path looked a little bleak. Ross Chastain, who I’ve competed with. I’ve been able to be a little bit of a fly on the wall of their work ethic.
They maybe started where I was but they’ve found more ways to become prepared and ways to get better. When I look back, I definitely worked hard. I just don’t think I always was applying it or asking the right questions along the way.
Yeah, in terms of the brand and the amount of stuff that I do, I think a lot of that comes from noticing what I wasn’t doing right on the driving side and making sure in the other parts and facets of my life to apply those lessons.
Q: Building a brand is something that has helped you stay in the game and is something a driver has to be aware of in 2023, but we’ve also seen some people who are really good at building brands who can’t drive (at a competitive level). What’s the balance?
Kligerman: In the sports world these days, you can buy a patch on a jersey in the NBA or MLB, all these areas that didn’t exist 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Racing was open about sponsorship and what they wanted because we needed it. It was part of the business model.
With that, race car drivers had to evolve to become influencer-like. You’ve got to do that, you’ve got to lean into that, because I don’t care how successful you are, you need to use those platforms to build an audience you can own and really be involved with.
In a lot of ways, race car drivers should aim to build communities around themselves … to control your destiny in a lot of ways as opposed to at some point not being able to.
I look at younger drivers coming through the ranks right now. One that really sticks out to me is Rajah Carruth. He’s a driver that … people ask me like oh, how do I get into it? How do I become a race car driver. He started iRacing and leveraged that to build a following and has created content throughout that journey from iRacing to real cars and the truck series. And he does an incredible job.
I feel like when I look at him, I’m like, OK, that’s the template right there. Be successful on track, but also from the time you start sim racing treat it like I’m going to become content creator, an influencer and a great race car driver. And if you do those things, I think you have a high ceiling to be a part of it.
And I think it’s going to continue to be something that drivers need to lean into and then lastly, not just selfishly for them. When I looked at the sport, you’re doing the sport a favor when you put as much effort off track as on track like a Corey Lajoie. The Cup Series, Corey Lajoie may not be fighting for wins every weekend, but the amount of value he brings the NASCAR Cup Series, everything else he does and his platform and his personality puts out there and how he controls his brand, that’s a very valuable thing for the sport, and it’s all show and he’s providing a tremendous amount of value to the show and content.
So I think that’s something that we’ve all got to focus on. If you want to be here, you got to focus on it.
Q: I suppose some of it has existed the whole time. It just didn’t really have a name.
Kligerman: Definitely. Dale Earnhardt, the moniker the Intimidator and him vs. Jeff Gordon … those guys were so ahead of their time in terms of leaning into the rivalries, learning to sell T-shirts, they set the template.
Q: It’s fair to say TV kept you in the game, agree?
Kligerman: Yeah, really agree. It wasn’t on purpose. I won’t lie.
I got an amazing, serendipitous call from … NBC right when I was doing the backup role for Kurt Busch in 2014, the Coke 600 / Indy 500 double that he did.
I just gone through the Swan Racing situation (shutdown) and they gave me an opportunity to do something different for a minute and I viewed it as a very short term thing and then I'll be back racing full time and then it devolved into sort of a long term thing.
Internally I was struggling with being on the schedule and showing up every weekend, watching a bunch of people do the thing I really wanted to be doing and talking about them and promoting them and promoting the sport and watching people I’d beat for years suddenly be in a really important position of racing for wins and thinking, like, what did I do wrong?
I just let that fall to the wayside and then when I felt like I was mixing the two really well an opportunity that I really didn’t see came along here with Big Machine Racing.
Q: Over this up-and-down over the last decade and a half there, do you have “if this would have happened” or “if that wouldn’t have happened” moments?
Kligerman: My time at Penske I wish maybe would have turned out a little different.
I find solace in the fact that I was so young that when you join an organization and you’re 18 years old, 18 through 22, that age range is a pretty interesting time in your life and to be in a professional organization such as Penske growing up that relationship goes from professional to more mentorship and you’re sort of the kid at the place right? I definitely made kid decisions.
Q: You’re still young but you’ve had this roller coaster. Where do you think you can still get in racing?
Kligerman: (I) have told myself since I decided to do this with Big Machine Racing that I was focused solely on the Xfinity Series and winning at this level and do the best I possibly can at this level and not letting the idea of like getting to Cup and having this full resurgence back to the Cup series be a part of my psyche.
All I know is it won’t go very far if I don’t win, so I’ve got to win. ... I want to win really badly and I want to compete for a championship at this level and I want to do it for Scott and for our race team and all the people that have supported me and all the fans out there that have said over the last couple years, what would Parker do in a fulltime ride? And I want to I really want to live up to that and I want to do it personally for myself.
I don’t care where it goes; I just want to win right now and be as successful as I possibly can and if I get to race for another 10 years and I'm making it at the highest level awesome. If in six months I win the championship and they say you’re not allowed to drive anymore, then so be it.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NASCAR's Parker Kligerman out to prove himself at 32 after wild career
