After a decade of running partial NASCAR schedules in all three series, Parker Kligerman finally had a full season a year ago to prove himself with a single team.
And it could pay off in full in 2024.
Despite not finding Victory Lane in 2023, Kligerman’s introductory season with Big Machine Racing was a smashing success. The Scott Borchetta-led organization, then in its third Xfinity Series season, recorded a team-high 18 top-10 finishes and Kligerman was a weekly front-of-the-field threat in the second half of the season, earning 14 top 10s over the final 20 races.
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“Productive in almost every category except for getting a checkered flag,” Kligerman said of his first season in the No. 48 Chevrolet. “We have done everything but get a checkered flag.”
Kligerman has earned nine top-five finishes in 47 starts in the No. 48 car. Statistically, the No. 48 team is off to a stronger start in 2024 compared to a season ago.
The early consistency has led to a happier driver as Kligerman is thoroughly pleased with Big Machine Racing’s performance to start 2024. At this time last year, he was still fresh to working with veteran crew chief Patrick Donahue.
“I didn’t know Parker at all a year-and-a-half ago,” Donahue, a member of Jeff Gordon’s Rainbow Warriors in the 1990s, said. “Just getting to know who he is, what he’s about and what makes us all tick.”
With how consistent Kligerman was the second half of the 2023 season, which included runner-up finishes at Road America and Texas Motor Speedway, he expected the team to pick up where it left off. The finishes haven’t told the full story, but the No. 48 team has improved at some of the most important tracks on the schedule, including Phoenix Raceway — the same venue that decides the 2024 Xfinity Series Championship.
“In terms of running position and results, we’re way ahead of last year, massively,” Kligerman said. “We’ve had a lot of issues on pit road this year; that’s been a tough spot for us. You can look at these first [13] races and add up a couple points over every race that if we had that back, we’re sitting fifth or sixth in points.”
Donahue agrees the team has far more speed this season as opposed to last.
“We’re running better and getting more stage points than we did last year,” Donahue stated. “The places where we’ve had our best races are Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta. And we had some of our worst finishes. We’re running faster and more competitive throughout the race.”
Kligerman often thinks about the races the No. 48 team let slip away. Believing that Jesse Love was going to run out of fuel at Atlanta, he was in position to take the victory but ran out of fuel himself on the restart. He led a season-high 10 laps at Talladega Superspeedway and was wrecked while leading on a late restart.
“Those are two that got away,” Kligerman added. “You look at those and are like, ‘Alright, we’re in it.’ “My sole focus this year is to just go win. Points have been nice, and I know we could have more points, but I’ve barely even looked at it because I know we can run well enough to just be here on points. Winning is really going to open the floodgates for our race team.”
Donahue is also astonished that the No. 48 has yet to win with Kligerman. The team is still building a notebook at select race tracks in its fourth season of competition. The single-car organization is competing against teams like Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing, which have been pumping out championship-capable Xfinity cars since the late 1990s.
“I’m surprised because we have put ourselves in that position probably more than anybody else in the field that hasn’t closed out the deal,” Donahue said. “What are you going to do? Are you going to let it tear you apart, or are you just going to keep racing and putting ourselves in position, and sooner or later, it’s going to fall our way?
“I know that we can win. We’re still trying to improve our program and make things better every week.”
Now, 46 races into Kligerman’s full-time tenure with Big Machine, it’s the most stability he’s had with one team in his career. Nearly half of his starts have come piloting the No. 48 Chevrolet in an opportunity he thought had sailed.
“To be somewhere and be committed to each other has been different,” Kligerman said. “When you don’t have the success you want, it’s like, ‘Oh no, in years past, you would be on to the next thing because that’s the way it works.’ Now it’s like, we’ve got to keep building.”
Much of Kligerman’s career following his 2013 season with Kyle Busch Motorsports consisted of scratching and clawing to find opportunities. Along the way, he picked up gigs with NBC Sports, whether it be pit reporting or hosting “Proving Grounds.”
To get back into the daily grind of being a race car driver has been “different” for Kligerman. He had to make life-changing sacrifices and is splitting time between his native Connecticut and having a room at a friend’s house in the Charlotte area.
“When you’re forced, like I was, to be beside it and not drive, you get a different view of life around you,” Kligerman added. “To get back into it is awesome, but you also have that perspective that you didn’t have before.”
MORE: Xfinity Series standings | Xfinity Series schedule
An avid road-course lover, Kligerman is excited about the stretch of races over a six-week period that began at Portland International Raceway with an eighth-place finish and will conclude at the Chicago Street Course in early July. Three of those races, including Portland, are on road courses. Kligerman’s average finish in 10 road courses with Big Machine is ninth. The series heads to Sonoma Raceway this weekend, where Kligerman finished fifth last season.
“I love stock cars on road courses,” he said. “There is nothing like a big water buffalo trying to go around those courses and hopping over the curbs, managing your brakes over the course of the run and the tire fall off.”
Perhaps achieving that long-awaited checkered flag is in order.
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