CONCORD, N.C. — Five feet.
Five feet was all that separated Parker Kligerman from scoring his first NASCAR Xfinity Series win.
Five feet was all that kept Kligerman from advancing to the Round of 8 via a farewell win in his final full-time season in NASCAR.
Five feet was all Kligerman needed to take the white flag at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, only for the caution lights to illuminate — and send the race to overtime — nearly 15 seconds after Leland Honeyman stuffed his No. 42 car into the tire barrier.
Kligerman held off the field the best he could on the final restart, but Sam Mayer was the class of the field all day and drove off into the sunset after completing the pass for the win in turn 7.
Five feet was all he needed, and five feet is what turned a win into an agonizing and painful sixth-place finish.
“I said on the cooldown lap I want to cry, but I won’t, and it’s gotten close a couple times as I think about it,” Kligerman said. “I just really loved doing this and I’ve been so grateful to have the opportunity and to be here and to be at this level and to make a career doing this.
“I just love the intensity and the pressure and I really, really wanted that. I just felt like that was poetic. If I could just do one thing, it would have been winning this damn race in that fashion, holding off the best in the world in [Shane van Gisbergen] and AJ [Allmendinger] and Sam Mayer, who’s the new ROVAL master now.”
For someone that had every right to be angry about the manner in which the caution was thrown, Kligerman was gracious in defeat and took it about as well as one could expect.
“I’m not going to get up here and be angry at NASCAR or everything,” Kligerman said. “I’ve watched plenty from the media side and the fan side and thought, ‘oh damn, that hurts,’ but here comes another restart, and you just got to refocus, and we did that.
“… It’s a call and that’s sports, and sometimes … it doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Sometimes you get a caution or get the white flag by an inch or a mile, and it was an inch for us this time.”
The caution came out so close to Kligerman taking the white flag that he and his team initially thought they had won the race.
“For a second I thought we had won, but I have done this enough on TV,” Kligerman said. “I was like, ‘hey, check that it’s official,’ and I saw on the big screen [crew chief] Patrick [Donahue] celebrating. So then I started tearing up and they were like, ‘oh no, we didn’t [win].'”
No matter how frustrating it was for the No. 48 team to be that close, there was still work to be done.
“We got to refocus, and I was like, ‘OK, all right I can do that, I’m a professional.'” Kligerman said. “I got the good restart, I fought them off and I did everything I could and then in [turn] 7, I didn’t do a good enough job.”
Perhaps the most frustrating part about the late caution was that the incredible battle for the win prior to the caution will be quickly forgotten.
Kligerman found himself as the first car on fresh tires on the restart with 11 to go, and he ran down and completed the pass on van Gisbergen just two laps later.
Mayer and Allmendinger applied the pressure and were hounding the No. 48 with four to go, but a bobble from Mayer left Kligerman with a near insurmountable lead had the race stayed green.
Instead, the incredible battle for the win and the incredible driving by Kligerman were all for naught.
“The laps leading up to that were some of the best that I’ve ever driven my entire career, and I just knew I had to be perfect, and I was,” Kligerman said. “I love this game, and I really wanted it. I really, really, really wanted this.”
As tough as a pill it was to swallow for Kligerman and the No. 48 team, he still has a month to vie for that “poetic” ending to his full-time NASCAR career.
“We got four more chances to go get a checkered flag. Let’s get it done.”
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.
He wasn’t in the script to win, play and simple. If certain other drivers were leading at that point the caution would have been delayed a little longer. NASCAR was holding off until they realized who was leading and what that meant.
Klingerman got screwed by NASCAR. The wreck was even on tv and no yellow had been thrown. Someone just didn’t want him to win. NASCAR loves overtimes, so they shafted Klingerman to get one.
His proximity to the white flag is a moot point, because NASCAR should have thrown the yellow sooner than they did. Their failure to act just added to their lack of credibility.