WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Ten laps into Saturday’s Misson 200 at the Glen, Parker Kligerman knew that he had a problem.
Kligerman’s gearbox began to fail, meaning he was unable to shift into fourth gear – restricting the car from reaching its top speed.
And somehow, he drove his No. 48 Chevrolet Camaro to a seventh-place finish and all but locked himself into the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs.
“Today wasn’t the cleanest day and it was one of those days we had to make the best of what we had,” Kligerman said after the race. “But we really did. I think we really made a lot out of the issues we had.
“Losing a gear is never fun. I really thought – I was scared we were done and this was gonna be a totally different story. But everyone buckled down. We found a way and got a strong finish.”
Though the problem came early, it only affected Kligerman at one spot on the racetrack. He only needed to shift into fourth gear going down the backstretch, which is the fastest spot on the 2.45-mile circuit. Even down the frontstretch, drivers remained in third gear.
So, to hold his ground and continue marching forward from a 19th-place starting spot, Kligerman needed to ramp up his aggressiveness.
“I started to realize I could feather [the gearbox] – which this comes from my old ARCA days when we used to only have 8800 RPM rev limits,” he explained. “You’d feather the throttle down the straightaways. I’d just get to terminal velocity, feather it, not hit the rev limiter too much, try to use the rev limiter when I was racing somebody and then back it off when I wasn’t and just trying to take care of the motor.
“You got to be very defensive and just choose when to use the rev limiter or not, because I’m not trying to beat up the motor and lap after lap after lap … It just makes it really hard. You also will lift early and just move your brake zone so much later, so it made it tougher to follow people.
“Kudos to ECR for a motor that could take that kind of abuse for a whole day and keep running. But it was incredibly difficult when racing people to hold them off or make moves.”
Then came the chaos.
Matt DiBenedetto stalled in the bus stop with six laps to go, setting up a green-white-checkered finish. But that set up several more incidents that ultimately changed the outcome of the race for many.
On that restart, several cars, including Austin Hill and Anthony Alfredo, wrecked entering Turn One. Alfredo’s car put down oil across the racing surface, halting the race for more than 22 minutes.
One more crash – a pileup in the bus stop – set up the final NASCAR Overtime attempt of the day, which fittingly ended under caution. Connor Zilisch won for his first series victory — which also happened to be his debut.
But a little further back, Kligerman kept swatting flies.
“The sun is so low – my windshield is covered in oil from the 38 car and some speedy dry. So, the two combined, I literally could not see a thing,” Kligerman said, analyzing the final laps of the race. “So I ran into the back of the 18 and then someone ran the back of me and shoved me in the wall and it was just chaos. But without that, I think we could have gotten to the top three where the 18 and 81 were, but we just got pile drove in that corner.
“I think for all we fought, this was a really, really impressive day.”
Kligerman scored 30 points Saturday, which puts him 85 points above the cutline – meaning only a new winner and a catastrophic finish at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway would knock him out of the playoffs.
But he’ll only have one more chance to race for a title. The 34-year-old announced he is stepping away from full-time NASCAR after the 2024 season, a decision made completely on his terms.
Kligerman isn’t exactly sure why he feels it’s time to hang up his helmet, but he is sure that he made the right decision.
“It just felt right. I don’t know any other way to explain it,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for almost a decade and a half. I’ve gotten a lot out of it and I’ve been really, really lucky to do it at a high level and to experience this with Scott Borchetta and Big Machine Racing and all these guys here.
“But it just felt like the time. I had this feeling that it was time, and for whatever reason, it was.”
Kligerman will look to cement his playoff spot at Bristol on Friday, Sept. 20.