WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Parker Kligerman “couldn’t see a thing.”
The driver of Big Machine Racing’s No. 48 Chevrolet was basically blinded in the midst of a “chaotic” overtime run to the finish in Saturday’s (Sept. 14) NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Watkins Glen International.
“On that last run there, the sun’s so low (and) the windshield is covered in oil from [Matt DiBenedetto‘s car] and speedy dry, ” Kligerman said.
On top of that, Kligerman had been without fourth gear since Lap 10.
“That was making it harder down the backstretch to hold people off,” Kligerman said. “So I had to be super defensive … and really overdrive the corner to hold them off.”
He wasn’t the only one throwing defensive elbows over the last two circuits of the 2.45-mile road course.
Kligerman, Shane van Gisbergen, AJ Allmendinger, Sheldon Creed and Chandler Smith were part of a swarm of cars chasing after eventual race winner Connor Zilisch.
Kligerman ran into the back of Creed. Somebody shoved him into the wall.
“It was just chaos,” without which Kligerman thought he could have made it into the top three. Instead, he finished seventh and all but clinched a spot in the playoffs.
van Gisbergen, who finished fifth and is tied for the series lead with three wins this season, looked like a human pinball as his No. 97 Chevrolet bounced off cars jockeying to be the driver that would give a challenge to Zilisch.
“It’s awkward with a teammate, you never want to race too hard like that” van Gisbergen said of Allmendinger, his Kaulig Racing colleague. “But it’s a green-white-checkered, and everybody loses their shit here.
“I’ll join them.”
Allmendinger, who finished third, called the wild final run “stupid, honestly.
“But if the fans love, we gotta keep doing it.”
Allmendinger then estimated that $3 to $4 million in damage was done over the race’s multiple overtime finishes, which extended the race by eight laps to 90 — the same length as Sunday’s (Sept. 15) NASCAR Cup Series race.
While Allmendinger thought the battle between the frontrunners was “aggressive,” it was never anything over the line.
“At any point one of us could have gone ‘Eff it,’ and just turned into each other,” Allmendinger said. “We leaned on each other…
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