In June, fresh off of an eighth-place finish in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Portland International Raceway, Parker Kligerman went for a run in the mountains. He’d spent years chasing the top levels of motorsport, reaching them, falling out of them, then climbing them again. During that time, he’d have waves of emotions about how his driving career would end. When morale was low, he’d think: “Damn it, you probably should stop chasing this.”
But it wasn’t until this year, amid a steady Xfinity Series career and a top-10 run in the series championship, that Kligerman reached the top of that mountain and had a moment of clarity.
“I was just like, ‘I think I'm good,’” Kligerman told Motorsport at Phoenix Raceway, his final race as a full-time driver. “And that was it.”
A couple weeks later, Kligerman, 34, talked to Scott Borchetta, his team owner at Big Machine Racing. Borchetta was “very supportive,” they worked out the details of Kligerman’s departure, and the team signed 23-year-old Nick Sanchez for 2025. Kligerman announced the end of his full-time driving career in September, three months after that post-Portland run.
When it came to the final race of the season in Phoenix, Kligerman wasn’t visibly sad. He said he mostly felt grateful and accomplished, especially after meeting fans over the weekend who thanked him for his presence in the sport.
“Like, I did this,” Kligerman said. “I got here. Even though I'm not racing for a championship today, and I haven't been as successful as I wanted, I do feel accomplished to have done this — and done it at a really high level, for really storied organizations — and worked with some of the best in the sport. The kid who saw this on TV at 9 years old somehow made it all work.”
Kligerman’s career has been a zig-zag. He ran his rookie season in NASCAR’s fourth-tier series, ARCA, as a 19-year-old development driver for powerhouse team Penske Racing. That year, he won nine of 21 starts.
In the decade that followed, Kligerman raced every NASCAR national series — Trucks, Xfinity, and Cup — for major teams like Penske, Brad Keselowski Racing, and Kyle Busch Motorsports, as well as underfunded ones like Swan Racing. The amount of races he ran fluctuated each year, and he supplemented drier spells with other work, such as being a presenter on NBC’s NASCAR broadcasts.
But for the past two years, Kligerman had a steady ride in the No. 48 car for Big Machine. He announced his retirement with specific phrasing: “I will no longer be pursuing racing full-time.”
“The reason I said 'No longer pursuing full-time' was that the entire time, every moment was: ‘How do I get to full-time again?’” Kligerman told Motorsport. “Every single off-season, every single year, from the first day I did TV until the Big Machine Racing deal, there would be like three or four deals that would be in the air. Like, ‘I'm going to get this, I'm going to get this.’ And then it would fall through.”
Kligerman’s journey — and final day at his job — is relatable. People often find meaning and self-definition in their work, because they spend so many hours of their lives doing it. Leaving a job can be unsettling, even if there’s freedom on the other side.
But professional driving isn’t a typical job, or even a typical sport. Kids with resources begin karting at kindergarten age, and they need time and financial support to have a shot at the big leagues. From that age onward, time off is just time lost to other drivers climbing the ladder.
“I never viewed [racing] as a career,” Kligerman said. “It was just like, ‘This is life. This is what I do, this is what I go after, and this is what I want to do.’ For any driver, when you're climbing the ranks, it's just like: ‘What's next? What's next? What's next? What's next?’ Then, once you get to the top, there's nowhere above that. You start to see where you stack up, and you start to get this idea of, ‘Hey, am I going to be the best ever?’ ‘Okay, I'm not.’
“Now you have to have a reckoning, because nobody gets into this thinking you're not going to be the best there ever was. You start to see what your weaknesses are, and see if you can work on being better.”
Kligerman said he never felt “settled or calm” about motorsport, because he constantly wanted more from it. Then, on vacation earlier this year, he went a week without thinking about racing. He turned to his friend and said: “That was weird.”
“How do you feel?” the friend asked.
“It was kind of cool,” Kligerman responded.
“To chase this thing, it's a 200-mile-per-hour, what's-right-in-front-of-you endeavor,” Kligerman told Motorsport. “You can't think about anything else. You have to have a fire inside that's like: 'This is all that matters.' The second I had the feeling that there were other things that mattered to me, I was like: ‘Okay, that's it.’”
Kligerman won three races in the third-tier NASCAR Truck Series and 10 in ARCA, and he’s always wanted to add an Xfinity win. In October, Kligerman led late in the Xfinity race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway roval, driving in a fever to stay ahead of a field stacked with road-course specialists. He had to win to advance to the next round of the NASCAR playoffs, and he was about to do that.
Kligerman ran out front for 12 of 72 laps late in the race, charging toward the white flag. (The white flag signals the last lap. In NASCAR, a caution before the white flag results in a restart. A caution after it ends the race.) Kligerman was inches away when a caution came out.
His lead vanished, and the field stacked two-wide for a restart.
“I knew it was close,” Kligerman said. “But then, I came around the corner, and they had a big screen. I see [my crew chief] Patrick [Donahue] come down from the pit box. I'm like: ‘We won! We did it!’ I definitely cried.
“Then they were like: ‘We didn't get the white.’ I just went back in the zone. I was like: ‘Alright bud, just got to nail this restart. Two more laps.’”
Kligerman nailed the restart and got ahead of the field. But not long after, eventual winner Sam Mayer caught him and made contact. Kligerman said the contact hurt the car, causing him to fall back and finish sixth. Even without the win, he’s “happy about it.”
“That is the best 10 laps I’ve ever driven, under the most immense pressure,” Kligerman told Motorsport. “That's my favorite race I've ever driven.
“I tell people the coolest thing about the NASCAR playoffs is that in no other form of racing will you be put in a race that's like: ‘Hey, you have to win this to go on.’ It's only in NASCAR, and I hadn't experienced that yet. I'd seen it from the TV side, and I'm like: ‘That must be the most insane feeling.’ There's no higher pressure you're ever going to be under in a race car than when you're leading and you must win that race. You've got to put it all on the line and perform, and we did.”
After the near-win in Charlotte, people asked if it made Kligerman want to keep going. He told them: ‘If one result could affect my decision, it wasn't very powerful.’”
That’s because his decision was bigger than results. It was a realization that he should sit back and enjoy life more.
“I think, definitely, I've taken racing way too seriously and let it eat at me,” Kligerman said. “My life has been measured by an 8-by-11 sheet of paper every time I step into a car. You're measured on how you conduct yourself, how you interact with the team, how you do the [racing] sim[ulator], how you do practices, how you test. Everything matters.
“Everyone uses the word ‘sacrifice,’ but you do. There's nobody who does this who's not going to tell you it takes literally everything you have, every waking second, to do this.”
Kligerman isn’t totally sure what’s next. He’s going to continue his television career, film for his YouTube channel, and try to run bucket-list races like the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway. But in terms of next year, Kligerman said: “We're letting the universe provide.”
“Hopefully, I'll be successful at what I'm doing next,” Kligerman said. “I am someone who probably values career progression way too much. I definitely have grown up a lot in this, and I think in the last two years, I've learned a lot about myself and my capacity for pressure. That gives me a lot of comfort in this next phase, matter what I do. It's like: ‘Hey, you've done it under the highest possible pressure there is. You performed.’ And that makes me very excited for what's next.”
In Phoenix, Kligerman said he couldn’t be sad about retiring, because he got to race for so long. Plus, it was “so unusual and ridiculous that it ever even came together in the first place.” He said his childhood self would wonder why he was retiring now — and why he didn’t win more races — but that he’d be proud to know the adult version of Kligerman became a lot more like his racing idols than he ever thought he would.
Kligerman also wants other people to know: If they’re thinking about chasing a motorsport dream, “they absolutely should.”
“It's an irrational game that makes no sense,” Kligerman said. “There are tens of millions of reasons you shouldn't do it. But if you can find one reason to, then go. There's so much to be learned in doing something like this, that requires so much of you in so many different capacities. No matter how successful you are, you would be able to look back at chasing something like this and know it was worth it, no matter what the success level was.”
