Nine-year-old Parker Kligerman was hooked on the images Speedvision brought into his family’s Connecticut home when the local cable company offered the network for the first time.
Suddenly, motorsports from all corners of the globe was beamed at the impressionable youngster who liked model cars but was unaware of the world of racing around him.
“I saw it and I can remember vividly to this day, thinking, ‘What is that? I need to be doing that,’” Kligerman told SPEED SPORT. “That sparked a multiple-decade journey to want to be a professional race car driver. From that moment, racing consumed my life.”
The well-spoken and thoughtful Kligerman, 32, has found plenty of on-track success, with three NASCAR Camping World Truck Series wins and 10 ARCA Menards Series victories to his credit through the end of August, along with time spent in the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series. He currently competes part-time while looking for the next full-time opportunity, but in recent years, has also become an important part of NASCAR on NBC’s broadcasts.
Now, he’s talking about racing on the very medium that brought him to the sport all those years ago.
“Whenever I’m put in a position of asking a question or looking for something to bring onto the broadcast, I always just go back to what did nine- and 10-year-old Parker want to know,” Kligerman said.
While Kligerman’s passion for the sport was ignited by television, his priority has always been behind the wheel.
When he was 12, his family moved from Stamford to Westport, Conn., and after scouring the internet, he discovered the Norwalk Karting Ass’n in a neighboring town. He says his mom, Dana, caved first and soon Kligerman was on the track in a kart that was a perfect Christmas gift from his mother and father, Robert.
However, he soon realized he was not in the same position as many of his competitors.
“I did a lot of it myself, the mechanics and all that, which I discovered pretty quickly was unique in that most kids’ dads were doing everything,” Kligerman said.
Often it was he and his mom at the track figuring things out, along with some help from the family of fellow racer Scott Heckert.
When Kligerman was 15, he knew he needed to begin racing cars and made a deal with his dad to do so.
“I said, ‘If you’ll just help me out for one year in cars, I’ll do the rest,’” Kligerman said. “That was a pretty unrealistic thing to think but somehow that did happen, we went to Formula Renault and won a championship and won a bunch of races. Then, I was able to parlay that into going toward the NASCAR side in ’07 and got some lucky breaks.”
The young driver was at first convinced he wanted to follow a path to Formula 1, but after becoming aware of the discipline’s exorbitant costs, instead focused his attention on stock cars.
He won nine ARCA races for Cunningham Motorsports as a Team Penske development driver in 2009 and finished second in the standings. The Xfinity Series was next, but Kligerman was climbing the ladder at the heart of the recession, and it was difficult to put full-time deals together.
He completed the full Truck Series schedule with Brad Keselowski Racing in 2011 and drove in every race the following year with the Keselowski team and Red Horse Racing.
For 2013, he drove full time in the Xfinity Series for Kyle Busch Motorsports and believed he had finally made it to the Cup Series when he signed a multi-year deal with Swan Racing for the 2014 campaign.
However, the team shut down eight races into the year and Kligerman was faced with the reality of not knowing what was next. He served as Kurt Busch’s backup driver when Busch took part in both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, and during that time, Kligerman received his first call from NBC.
For the previous two years he had been writing columns for Jalopnik.com, often with heartfelt honesty about the realities of the sport and his struggles to make a living in it. A young producer had been reading them and Jeff Behnke, today the vice president of NASCAR Production and Motorsports at NBC Sports Group, reached out to Kligerman to ask if he’d be interested in any television work.
Kligerman agreed and upon asking where the company was located, found out it was in his original hometown of Stamford, Conn. He put many of his belongings in storage and made the move to the Nutmeg State, where he began contributing to NBC’s NASCAR programming.
He has been part of the network’s “NASCAR America” show and hosts the YouTube program “In the Wall,” covering all forms of motorsports. Currently though, he’s perhaps best-known as a pit reporter.
“I wasn’t too sure I wanted to go do that but here I am many years later and it’s definitely worked out,” Kligerman said. “I enjoy sort of bringing something new to the viewers, and over the years I hope I’ve added some sort of different flair and perspective down there that’s helpful to the broadcast.”
For Kligerman, his roles as a driver and reporter are intertwined and one benefits the other.
“If I’m able to just garner one thing from racing that weekend, or the weekend prior, to bring to the broadcast that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t race, then the broadcast won,” he said. “Vice versa, TV has really helped me on the racing side because it just really forced me early on to look at the sport from a different and a broader perspective. When you’re racing, you’re focused on you, your car and your team. That’s the whole world. Then, you go to the broadcast side and there are 40 cars every weekend. You’ve got to know everything about them and that’s just in one series.”
He believes that different perspective has made him a better driver, something he has taken to Henderson Motorsports, his current team in the Truck Series.
Since the 2017 campaign, Kligerman has found a home with the part-time Abingdon, Va., outfit and has scored two wins in its No. 75 truck, including one at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course earlier this year. Although Kligerman has competed in all three of NASCAR’s national series for the better part of a half-decade, the Henderson operation is today with whom he is most identified.
His crew chief from his ARCA days, Chris Carrier, is from southwest Virginia and sits atop the pit box for Henderson Motorsports. The crew chief and driver had long talked about working together again someday and it was Carrier who brought Kligerman to the team.
“We have so much fun, that team’s a family to me,” Kligerman said.
The team has run a part-time schedule for many years, with Kligerman explaining its goal is to not overextend itself, but rather select races where the small group can show up and win. Still, if the right opportunity were to come along, Henderson would likely be a full-time program.
“We’ll see where it all ends up, but they’ve been incredible to me and I hope I’ve been able to return the favor with some trophies,” Kligerman said.
The NBC brass and Kligerman’s pit road colleagues are well aware of his desire to make a living as a full-time driver, and they have been supportive of his ever-changing schedule and deals that may or may not come to fruition.
In many ways, he’s repaid the favor on that side as well with his storytelling talent. He seems like a natural in front of the camera but says the job didn’t come to him quite as easily as it appears, noting some anxieties he’s had to work through and the need for extensive preparation.
Nevertheless, in addition to his unique perspective on the sport, he’s also never shied away from asking tough questions, many to owners and drivers who could someday be his bosses or teammates.
“I just think that the fans deserve it and it’s best for the sport that we put everything out there, that it’s as natural and human and as open as possible,” Kligerman said.
Among Kligerman’s other endeavors is a small ownership stake in Lakeville, Connecticut’s Lime Rock Park, his home track that was instrumental in his early career.
But while his interests are broad, this year Kligerman remains primarily focused on his work both behind the wheel and in front of the camera. He’s open about some of the frustrations in constantly searching for opportunities, but despite watching some of his contemporaries reach the upper echelon of the sport after toiling with uncompetitive teams, he is content with his career choices.
“I think my best is yet to come,” he said. “I went on a unique path, and it didn’t quite line up with maybe the ultimate goal of being in a winning Cup ride, but I think it’s a really cool, unique existence in NASCAR.”