{"id":90608,"date":"2025-08-23T06:50:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T06:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/90608\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T06:50:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T06:50:05","slug":"parker-kligerman-helps-get-first-national-nascar-win-for-a-relief-driver-in-18-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/90608\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker Kligerman Helps Get First National NASCAR Win for a Relief Driver in 18 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parker Kligerman began Friday’s Wawa 250 in Daytona Beach, Fla., as a color television commentator for The CW’s coverage of the Xfinity Series race. That positioning gave no hint of where he’d end it.<\/p>\n

With driver Connor Zilisch tapping out in the middle of the race to attend to his broken collarbone<\/a>, Kligerman climbed into Zilisch’s No. 88 car for JR Motorsports\u2014and promptly piloted it to victory, making him the first relief driver<\/a> to win a race at any national level of NASCAR since 2007.<\/p>\n

That year, a late-arriving Denny Hamlin jumped in for Aric Almirola in the Busch Series’s AT&T 250 in West Allis, Wis.\u2014winning the race and enraging the latter driver<\/a>. No relief driver has won in the Cup Series since Darrell Waltrip relieved an ill Donnie Allison in Talladega, Ala., in 1977.<\/p>\n

Unlike in ’07, Zilisch was grateful to Kligerman.<\/p>\n

“It’s just not worth the risk to put myself in danger of having a big wreck and re-injuring something that’s so freshly injured,” Zilisch said after yielding the car<\/a> following a caution. “I’m glad I was able to hand it to Parker. There’s not many guys I’d rather have than him. I’m excited to watch him.”<\/p>\n

Zilisch, not Kligerman, will be credited with the win; Kligerman still has never won from 122 Xfinity Series starts. On Friday, racing fans learned that fact is not for a lack of trying.<\/p>\n

More on Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parker Kligerman began Friday’s Wawa 250 in Daytona Beach, Fla., as a color television commentator for The CW’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-90608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}