With a career spanning more than 16 seasons in NASCAR’s highest divisions, Parker Kligerman has decided that now is the time to step away from full-time driving.
Article is from Frontstretch.Com
The 34-year-old Connecticut native has three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series wins to his name, along with 263 combined starts between the NASCAR Cup Series (30), NASCAR Xfinity Series (116) and Truck Series (117).
After piecing together part-time rides and opportunities since 2014, Kligerman got his first full-time opportunity in nearly a decade with Big Machine Racing, with whom he’s competed full-time in Xfinity since 2023.
Qualifying for the Xfinity playoffs for the second consecutive year, Kligerman has six races left in his full-time NASCAR career to score his first Xfinity win and compete for the series championship.
Frontstretch spoke with Kligerman prior to the Sept. 28 Xfinity race at Kansas Speedway. They chatted about his decision to step away from full-time driving, his experiences in the sport, his outlook on the remaining six races and the plans he has in store after the season is over.
Below is an excerpt of the interview. To hear the interview in its entirety, you can watch it on Frontstretch‘s YouTube channel or listen to it during this week’s edition of FS‘ Bringing the Heat podcast.
For Kligerman, the decision to step away from full-time driving wasn’t spontaneous, nor was there a single event that led to his decision.
“I don’t know if there’s any one specific thing in decisions like this,” Kligerman said. “It’s a multitude of different things that add up, and then you say, ‘hey, I think I’m good.’ And it really came down to that; I don’t know if there’s any other way to describe it. I feel very at peace with it. I’ve never been so relaxed in my entire life as I have the last two weeks.
“This is all I ever chased for 22 years, basically since I first stepped into a go-kart. I want to do this. And I know that in six or seven weeks, I’m shutting that off for the first time in my life.”
And it was his full-time opportunity with BMR — an opportunity he had been chasing for nearly a decade — that made his decision to step away an easier one.
“But I’m at peace with it, this was a really cool opportunity,” he says. “Thank you to Scott and Sandy Borchetta for the opportunity and Spiked Coolers and everyone that made it happen, because it let me come to peace with this [decision] that I wouldn’t have been ready to do two or three years ago. In the end, I made the decision, took the leap, and we’ll see what’s on the other side.”
Kligerman is at peace, and he’s felt as relaxed as ever following the decision. And while he’d still love to score that first Xfinity win and go far in this season’s championship, the added pressure from the past is gone.
“I’d love to [win], but I’m not putting extra pressure on to make it happen,” Kligerman explained. “We’ve been so damn close that if we just keep doing what we’ve been doing, I think the opportunity is there to make it happen.
“… I want to make it happen, but I’m not putting that pressure on myself, and I feel the same way about the Championship 4. I want to get to the Championship 4; I want to do that. That’s an amazing accomplishment to me, for this race team. And if we could make that happen, I would be over the moon. If we don’t, just having a successful seven races, similar to what we’ve done all year, would make me just as happy.
“… Just really at peace with my decision and my career as a whole, with what I’ve done in this sport and the opportunities that I’ve had. I’m very thankful to have this chance to end it right at the precipice of our series here and at the point again trying to race for a championship. That’s such a cool thing, I just want to go get it done.”
Following a 12th-place finish at Kansas, Kligerman sits 15 points below the cut line with two races left in the Round of 12. But the next two races are at the always chaotic Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, and there’s no points lead or deficit that can’t be overcome.
“Hopefully it’s chaotic for everyone else,” he says. “We’ll take a real smooth round. … If we just do what we’ve done for the better part of the last six months in terms of average finish, I see no reason we can’t advance on points.”
The next two races aren’t just racetracks where Kligerman has the potential to rack up points: they’re tracks where he can be a serious contender for the win. Two of his three truck wins were at Talladega, while his third came at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in 2022. Furthermore, of Kligerman’s 15 top-five finishes in Xfinity competition, 12 of them have come at superspeedways and road courses.
“Talladega is obviously an opportunity to win, I think the ROVAL is an opportunity to win,” Kligerman notes. “We’ll balance that, but we got to be smart. … We just got to do what we do, and that’s be smart and race our race.
“[Let] the others make the mistakes, and if we do that in the next three races, not only do I think there’s a trophy out there for us, but I think we easily move on to the next round. Then all bets are off in the Round of 8, because you got to win one.”
Depending on when and where Kligerman races in his future part-time endeavors, the final stretch of this season could potentially mark some of his last visits to tracks as a driver. It’s also his last moments to soak all the experiences in as a full-time driver — a dream that he had spent more than two decades striving to achieve.
“I’m sure it’s starting to feel more real, but it won’t until the checkered flag falls in Phoenix,” he says. “And suddenly I’m like, ‘oh, wait, that’s it.’ We’ll see, it might hit me when I least expect, but I try to just focus on right now.”
And of course, there are some parts of full-time driving that he will miss.
“I think [I’ll miss] the groove of doing this week to week,” Kligerman explains. “You show up and it compounds when you’re doing well and working with all these guys on this team, in terms of just having that camaraderie and working toward a specific goal and knowing that everyone’s putting everything they have into it. You put in effort, and you start to see results so quickly. … You get to see how things are working so quickly, and I love that.”
“At the end of the day, I just love driving racecars. There’s nothing cooler than doing a qualifying lap up next to the wall like we did earlier today. … I’ll miss that, for sure.
“I think the other part is when you’re younger, you’re always moving up the ladder, right? You’re going up, up, up and it’s always what’s next, what’s next? And for the first time in my life racing-wise, it’s not what’s next, so that’s a bit of a transition. I do miss always going to the next thing and moving up, but hopefully there’ll be that opportunity in the next chapter of my life and whatever we go into.”
On the other hand, the grind required to make it in this industry — whether it’s from travel or all the hard work and hours of commitment required to be successful — is a tall order that few have the grit and passion to pursue. Kligerman feels content in no longer having to keep up with the demanding schedule.
“On the flip side, the schedule is pretty brutal,” he said. “Plus, I’ve really been having to balance my time between Charlotte and Connecticut for the last seven or eight years. … And so that back and forth between Charlotte, sometimes day trips, sometimes three to five times a week. I’ve done it all.
“Let’s put it this way: I know specific flight attendants on American Airlines flights between Charlotte and New York. I’ve spent a lot of time on those flights, I still will; I’m sure in my next life. But that part is pretty brutal.
“[What] this takes from sunup to sundown in terms of chasing sponsorship dollars and putting these operations together and trying to build on those. It’s such a massive endeavor, and that’s the part of why I felt like I had to make a decision at some point, because you got to turn that off at some point and maybe apply it somewhere else. … That’s such a large undertaking that if you’re not ready to commit to that level, then you shouldn’t be here. And I think I’m finally good with not being at that level.”
What’s the next chapter for Kligerman? He may be done with racing full time, but he lives and breathes racing and has kept the door open for part-time opportunities. One of the opportunities he’s hoping to pursue next year is a Truck start in the series’ debut race at Lime Rock Park, a 1.53-mile road course in Kligerman’s home state of Connecticut. He’s also one of the track’s co-owners.
“I got to be in that race,” Kligerman states. “I’ll be there no matter what. I don’t care what I’m doing, I’m going to be there. … I’ve got a lot of great people reaching out wanting to make it happen, so I feel pretty confident that will happen. I think it’s just a place near and dear to my heart. I got to be there, I got to see this. I think it’s going to be the biggest event in Lime Rock history. It’s so cool to see this happening and to get a top-three NASCAR race there.”
Beyond the Lime Rock race, Kligerman has set the goal for a handful of part-time starts in NASCAR next season, and he also hopes he will one day have the opportunity to run sports cars.
“I don’t think a large amount,” he says. “I think if I was above 10 races that would be aggressive, but somewhere underneath there is probably the right amount for me in between trucks and if there an opportunity to do some Rolex stuff, which would be cool. If we can make that happen, I’ve always wanted to do sports cars, especially the endurance races. So if that can happen, that would be cool.”
Most importantly, Kligerman wants to stay and racing world and experience as much of it as he can. He may be starting a new chapter beyond full-time racing, but that new chapter will include racing every step of the way.
“My thing is to also just go experience motorsports the world over,” Kligerman said. “I’ve been able to sort of experience it from afar, but I want to go, this is such a diverse sport. It comes in so many shapes, forms, sizes, styles, smells and sounds that it’s just in every culture; it’s different. And I want to go explore that and experience those things.
PHOTO: JAMIE SQUIRE//GETTY IMAGES
