Many drivers feel that it is hard to control your own destiny at a superspeedway race, but Parker Kligerman isn’t one of those drivers. The 22-year-old believes that there is technique and a strategy involved in plate racing and while his team may not make a lot of laps on the track in practice for Friday night’s Subway Jalapeno 250 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, the superspeedway student will have put in the “homework” necessary to be in a position to succeed long before he buckles into his No. 77 Bandit Chippers Camry – which will feature a patriotic paint scheme for the holiday weekend.
The results Kligerman has posted on superspeedways back up his theory. He has finished sixth or better, led multiple laps and been in position to win both of the Nationwide Series superspeedway races this season. Last year, he picked up his lone Truck Series win on a superspeedway, winning the October event at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway and also registered a respectable 11th-place finish in the Daytona Truck Series race. That gives him an average finish of 5.8 across his last four NASCAR superspeedway races.
For Friday night’s race, Kligerman and his Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) team will be unloading the same Toyota Camry, KBM-10, that they qualified third and finished fifth with in the season-opening event at Daytona and followed it up with a sixth-place finish at Talladega in May. It will also have a familiar logo on the hood, as Bandit Chippers jumps on board for its first of three additional primary races after seeing the rewards of a successful early-season schedule.
When Kligerman hits the track at Daytona, he will already be mentally prepared for what lies ahead in Friday night’s 100-lap shootout. He will have watched race tapes, put in laps on a simulator and developed a game plan in his head of how the race will likely play out and where he needs to be during different stages of the race. The student of superspeedway racing is hoping to be the valedictorian of the Subway Jalapeno 250 and leave Florida with his first Nationwide Series victory.
KBM PR
