Kligerman, who drives a part-time schedule for Henderson Motorsports, dominated much of Saturday’s race but found himself in the final stage consistently hounded by Smith for the lead.
Smith cleared Kligerman on a restart with eight of 67 laps remaining for the lead but late caution for a stalled truck on the track set up a final restart with three laps to go. This time, it was Kligerman who out-dueled Smith and edged him by 0.119 seconds for the victory.
The win is the third of Kligerman’s career but first since 2017. He previous two Truck Series wins both came at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
After taking the checkered flag, Kligerman’s crew chief told him over the team radio to “burn it down” and that’s exactly what Kligerman did, surrounding his No. 75 Chevrolet with a large cloud of smoke.
Kligerman, 31, also collected a $50,000 bonus for the win as part of the three-race Triple Truck Challenge.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Kligerman said. “I was real emotional on the cool-down lap because this whole team is a team of second chances. Two years ago, I thought my driving days were done. This team gave me call, wanted to get back racing and it’s been steady improvement up until now.
“It’s unbelievable when you put a talented group of humans together what you can achieve and we are doing this on an absolute fraction of what the trucks were up against.
“And – finally – a road course win. I started in road courses and I came into NASCAR thinking, ‘Oh that will be easy’ and it’s taken me more than a decade to get a win. This is the small team that could, but we’re not a small team that doesn’t win. We win.”
Smith, who all-but clinched the Truck Series regular season title with his runner-up finish, said he was not going to wreck Kligerman for the win.
“It was so hard to pass and those final last set of corners are so awkward to try and do something. It was going to be hard for me to wreck the guy who pushed me to my Daytona win, so I just tried to move him out of the way and cross him over but like I said it just an awkward set of corners to do that,” he said.
Carson Hocevar finished third, Stewart Friesen fourth and Christian Eckes fifth.
Completing the top-10 were Chandler Smith, Kaz Grala, Derek Kraus, Colby Howard and Hailee Deegan.
Stage 3
Following the 3-minute break between Stages 2 and 3, the field made a round of controlled pit stops. Dylan Lupton sped on pit road during the stop and had…
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