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[/media-credit]Friday, April 13, 2012
RAM PR
Rockingham Speedway
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
Parker Kligerman Open Interview
Parker Kligerman (No. 29 Draw-Tite/Mopar RAM)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HERE AT ROCKINGHAM AND THIS HISTORIC WEEKEND? “Obviously it means a lot, having your name on the rock out there, the new rock, not the old rock. The place has a lot of historic precedence and it means a lot to me as a driver, considering I’ve won here before. But to be back in a NASCAR series, this means a lot, obviously, to be kind of the series that’s ushering back in the new era for The Rock. We’re just proud to be here and hopefully we can stay up front all weekend.”
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU RACED HERE? “Twice.”
DO YOU FEEL THAT, EVEN THOUGH THAT’S A LIMITED AMOUNT OF EXPERIENCE, DOES THAT GIVE YOU A HUGE ADVANTAGE OVER A LARGE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T RACED HERE BEFORE? Well, as professional race car drivers, you know, we come to these tracks it should take you three to five laps. You know if you don’t have it in that three to five laps figuring out a track, you’re probably not going to get it that weekend. And honestly the difference between the cars and the tires that we’ve run back in the other series, there’s a huge amount there that doesn’t really carry over. For me, I feel like I know the feel that I want in a race truck and that’s just the biggest thing, you know. When we go out there in that first three laps I know this is good or it isn’t and that’s the biggest thing that helps. Getting around the track line-wise, you should be able to figure that out.”
IS THERE A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ARCA CAR AND YOUR RAM TRUCK HERE? HOW HAVE YOU ADAPTED TO THAT? “For sure there’s a huge difference in horsepower. It’s almost two hundred some horsepower and then the Hoosier tire is the largest difference. The Hoosier tire is very forgiving, very soft, it falls off very quickly. This tire, this Goodyear tire, I feel like they’ve done a good job. It has a rate of fall-off that we can keep up with. It’s about a tenth (of a second) per lap, which is nice that you can kind of know exactly where you’re at in the fall-off. What that means driving-wise is that in the truck drive-off, getting to the throttle, is a lot easier than the ARCA car. The ARCA car takes a lot more, I guess, patience on the throttle. You almost got to treat it like an egg shell that’s under there and then the way that you can kind of attack the corners more in a truck and with this Goodyear tire you can get away with a little bit more in terms of long-run speed.”
YOU ARE CARRYING NEW SPONSORS AND NEW COLORS THIS WEEKEND. “We have Draw-Tite for the first time this year which is a subsidiary brand of Reese Towpower and we’re excited about that. Reese Towpower will be on at Kansas next weekend and obviously its kind of cool to bring in a new sponsor to the truck series on top of Cooper Standard, which we’ve had for two races this year. You know, in a day and age when a lot of people are not bringing in any sponsors, we’ve brought two separate sponsors into the sport. We’re pretty proud about that and for the whole Brad Keselowski Racing organization this means a lot because this allows us to go the full year.”
HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN ABLE TO GET TO ALL THREE RACING GROOVES DURING PRACTICE TODAY? “I feel like this track, you don’t have a groove. You know you go where your race truck works. You’ll see everyone qualify on the bottom and that works for about a lap or two and then from there you are going anywhere you can go. If the top works, go to the top. If the middle works, you go to the middle. And Todd Bodine gave us all a pep talk in the driver’s meeting there. He said as for grooves, go where you want. That’s why we put on great racing here and that’s why we’re excited to be back here ‘cause you can do that.”
DO YOU PREFER A TRACK LIKE ROCKINGHAM OR A FRESHLY REPAVED TRACK LIKE MICHIGAN OR POCONO? “Well I prefer to be here ‘cause when we go there RCR will be like one through five – I’m just kidding (laughs). When you do that thing that puts a huge precedence on equipment. When you come here it puts a huge precedence on driver and team and people and I feel like this sport is about people. So when we come to races like this, you know, you want to see the people element come out. You want to see the talent in the organizations come out. It’s a joke with RCR. They’ve done a great job with their program. Obviously they’re a Cup team in this series so they’ll be fast there. We will also be. I think for Michigan the big question is if we bring a superspeedway truck or not, which John (King) has a lot of experience at. Hopefully he’s not as good as he was in Daytona (and) we can go out there and beat ‘em.”
