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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: BUDWEISER DUEL #2February 20, 2014Parker KligermanDAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA KERRY THARP: As requested, Parker Kligerman has come into the media center. He has raced his way into the Daytona 500. Parker, yesterday you were barreling down the frontstretch on your roof, and now you're in the Daytona 500. PARKER KLIGERMAN: Pretty big change, eh? We'll start there. Obviously that was a letdown yesterday, as I said to a lot of people here. One of the most interesting moments of my life, sliding on your roof. But my guys worked incredibly hard. I know you hear that a lot, pretty cliché. You don't understand, we obviously had our second car hurt. Our guys were trying to put a backup in it, had a Cole's seat in it. We had to take that seat out. Redo everything. We get in the Duel, in the last lap running ninth with Lending Tree onboard, who just came onboard the morning before, suddenly start to have the fuel issue we had and see the grasp that we had on both cars making the 500 slip away from us, it was one of the worst feelings of my life. Then the worst feeling would be watching that race right there, and I was not a fan of any driver in that race at all throughout the whole thing. Thankfully it all worked out. KERRY THARP: Questions. Q. After we spoke after your race, you said you were probably going to sit somewhere by yourself and not even watch this race. How did you spend the time? PARKER KLIGERMAN: Well, thankfully at this level you can afford a motorhome. We were in that with my manager, my personal PR girl, my spotter, and myself. The only way I could compare it is I'm pretty into politics, is like running for the presidential election. No one has the right info, everybody is saying the info they think they have, but you don't know. It was like that for an hour. We were constantly doing the math, screaming and yelling and looking around. I think I was more animated than I normally am, I know that says a lot. I feel like in a lot of ways, you have the weight of an organization on your shoulders to get these two cars in the race, the 26 and the 30. It's a growing organization, an organization that wants to be around for a long time to come, that wants to be a Chase contender in years to come. We've done a lot of work in the off‑season, had a lot of success as you see with Speed Stick on Cole's car, Lending Tree on my car. I think we've had a lot of success. Then not to nail the competitive part like we were last year, would be a huge letdown, and thankfully we didn't. Q. You watched the race? PARKER KLIGERMAN: I did watch it in the bus, every lap, sadly. It was terrible. Q. When you left here, what did you think the odds were? PARKER KLIGERMAN: I've always had a saying in life: It will all work out, always has, always will. That's what helps me sleep through all the times. In my career, I didn't come with a lot of family funding, not a lot of fanfare to this point. I've had to kind of fight and root and gouge for everything I've got. I've had a lot of times in my career where someone walked up to me before I got in the car and said, This is your only shot, make it count. I felt this was lesser than that. I have a lot of people that believe in me at this stage in my career. I know how to get it done. My team knows how to get it done. I had confidence in that. I knew they wouldn't put a car under me that wouldn't get it done. Thankfully they did. We had a little miss‑up there. Falling back in the points, I knew that gave me some breathing room. You weren't sure. I don't know how to describe it in words other than to say I was cautiously calm, cautiously optimistic would be the way to put it, but definitely not confident as much as cautiously optimistic. Q. Do you have an announcement about fatherhood? PARKER KLIGERMAN: No, thank God. I couldn't compare it to anything else at the time. There was a lot going through me in terms of emotions. I thought the only thing that could possibly be as nerve racking would be becoming a father for the first time. It's that level, it's the Daytona 500, the biggest race possibly in the world in a lot of ways when you look at the viewership, the money behind it, the attendance. It's an honor to be part of it for the first time, it's an honor to have a chance at it, then to be in a position where people cared or not whether I was in it. I'm grateful and astonished to be here and ready to get the job done, ready to build this race team into a top‑25 organization. Q. We're sitting hanging upside down trying to put your window net down, gravity wasn't letting that happen. The last time you were in the car, you have to climb in the car tonight and go race it, knowing the skills most of these guys in the garage have, isn't there at least a bit of trepidation when you go into one the first time? PARKER KLIGERMAN: So should I be honest or be like the confident, cool racecar driver? I got to drive the truck in second practice. We skipped first practice. We didn't do any drafting. I got to go out in the truck and did something that helped us a lot in the Cup car, I did a bunch of runs on pit road. We actually set up our pit box for the Cup car for the Duel. I started to focus on we know there's going to be a green flag stop, there always is. We knew we were only going to take fuel, no tires, started to work on the truck. Even though it's very different, it started to get my mind focused on the race, focusing forward, focusing on what was going on. But I will say it was when the national anthem was going, I had my eyes closed during the prayer. In my mind for the first time ever I had replayed the wreck, and that was being upside down. Just seeing that all in your head, thinking, Man, that was quite the ride. Glad to be here, lucky to be here at all. Not lucky in that we have such great safety stuff from what NASCAR has, Bell helmets, Butler seats, all the amazing safety advances we made. Still, at the end of the day it's still going 200 miles an hour upside down in a racecar. Once that went away, it was focus forward, job at hand, we got it done. Q. As a spectator for the second race, did you find it highly unusual that two guys in a 60‑lap race ran out of fuel? PARKER KLIGERMAN: Well, we were still going through everything, but there is a chance that we also ran out of fuel. We're looking at the fuel pickups and such. I don't think it's so out of the realm because of the nature of the race. It is a one‑stop race. The shorter you make that stop, the better we're going to do. We know historically these things go green throughout. Statisticians will tell you that doesn't mean anything. You have to think that for this race, drivers are less aggressive at the start simply because everyone knows what's at hand. Everyone knows what's at risk, which is not making the 500, ruining your 500 car. You focus on the idea of what's the shortest way to get that pit stop. From there, you go into the fuel situation. As you come down pit road, your crew chief will say, Five seconds of fuel. You'll sit there, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi. He'll say go, go, go, and sometimes it's not right because the guy didn't get plugged up quick enough. I assume that's what happened to those two. Sorry for the long answer, but thank you. Q. You mentioned while you were sitting there trying to figure out all the different scenarios of were you in, not in, I know when I talked with your car owner yesterday, he goes, We're not worried about Parker because he's got top 35. I was like, They don't do that anymore. There was a lot of misinformation, wasn't there? Made the night confusing. PARKER KLIGERMAN: Absolutely. Tons of misinformation. Bob tried to message me the Harvick situation. Thank you, wherever you are. I think that was the kind of information we had. That's all you get in this situation. It's not like there's a direct communication between us and NASCAR. They're running the race at hand. For them it's not their job to tell us what's going on because they're running the current race. As I can say, it's like anything else, a presidential election, something like that, you're at the mercy of someone else's information, at the mercy of someone else's decisions and actions. It's a tough place to be, but I hope to never be in that position again. Q. This may misconstrue karma, but between the fuel pickup and being on the roof, do you feel like you've run out of bad luck now? PARKER KLIGERMAN: I don't believe in bad luck. It only brings bad luck. I think that was James Hunt who said that. I guess I never really focused on that side of things. I always look forward in this sport. You can't look back. As I said before, that was one of the first rare instances I did after that wreck. It's a sport that if you do look back, you could go crazy looking at all the decisions you could have made differently, done differently. You look at you're here in Sprint Cup, running the Daytona 500, growing the organization, all the things you have going forward. Even if your career is on the downslope, there's other things in life. There's other things to look forward to. You have to look forward, look positive and be ready for what's next. I would also say go check out, nootelligence.com. Go check it out. That's my company. KERRY THARP: Thank you, Parker. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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