Kligerman Posts Solid Fourth-Place Finish in ‘Super Bowl’ Race at Bristol

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor

BRISTOL, Tenn. – It’s good to be on home turf.

Parker Kligerman, who drives for Abingdon, Virginia based Henderson Motorsports gave the home crowd a thrill in Thursday night’s UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway as he scored a fourth-place finish, marking his best NASCAR Camping World Truck Series finish of the season.

“It’s a good run for everyone at Henderson Motorsports and Food Country USA in their backyard here,” said Kligerman. “It’s a home race for them. It’s the Super Bowl for us. We’ve got Lopez Wealth Management, which is a local company. We’re just full of local people that support this team. Chris Carrier, my crew chief is from here.

“A good run is good here and it’s good to get a top-five again for this team. I mean, we do a lot with a little. We’ve got two full-time employees basically and we come out here and race against multi-million dollar organizations and run just as well.”

After posting practice speeds right on the edge of the top-10 earlier in the day, Kligerman and his team turned things up a notch in qualifying as they put up the sixth fastest speed and things only got better once the green flag flew for the 200-lap race.

Kligerman finished the first two stages in sixth place and climbed his way to fourth in the final stage, using knowledge from past races on the half-mile bullring to his advantage to keep his No. 75 Chevrolet firmly in the top-five for the remainder of the race.

“I’m proud of that, but I want more. We were just too tight. We could never get the top to work and forever I’ve run only the top. I’m terrible on the bottom. I came here with a focus on being good on the bottom and we were awesome on the bottom, but then I was terrible on the top, so I’ve got to find a happy medium.”

Despite the season-best, Kligerman and his team are hungry for more as they will take a break until mid-October before returning to the track at Talladega, where they scored the victory last season. Aside from trying to capture another win, the team has bigger aspirations of trying to go full-time racing and competing for a championship.

“Our next race is going to be Talladega and then hopefully we’ll do Homestead to finish it. The only one guaranteed is Talladega right now.

“We’re really pumping up our effort to find some marketing partners and do all we can to maybe make this a full-time gig next year. This team, we want to do it and we know we can run for a championship. I mean, hell, we run up front 8-10 times a year, whatever we do, with two full-time employees. Imagine what we could do with a full budget and going for a full championship.”