iRacing News Exclusive With Parker Kligerman

Parker Kligerman was a rookie in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this year, but he is also an avid iRacer. One of the many who made a qualifying attempt for this year’s iRacing.com Indy 500 in the new DW-12, Kligerman showed his pace by placing himself inside the top 33 and guaranteed himself a spot in the top split event.

I had not realized Parker was even on iRacing, until I saw him in an Indy 500 qualifying session. I knew he lived only a 15 minute ride down the parkway, so I decided to send him a message and see if he would be interested in meeting so I could ask him a few questions on behalf of iRacing News. Parker kindly accepted and we met the next day before he was heading to Japan. So, in this exclusive iRacing News interview you will be able to read about Parker’s road to the Sprint Cup Series, his company, and a little bit about his career plans, and of course his honest opinion on the iRacing.com simulation service all in his very own words.

So my first question for you is everyone knows you as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Rookie, but do you have any other interests that you would like to tell our readers about?

If they don’t already know I also write for Jalopnik.com, which is the number one automotive website in the world now, and I always tried to do one a month where I contribute some car related thing or race related thing from a driver’s perspective which has been really cool.

I also started this company Nootelligence last year.  We just hit our one year anniversary and we’ve been on the market now for six weeks and grown pretty steadily so that’s been fun . . . and also coming up you might see me on TV a lot. I know I’m first and foremost known as a racing driver, but I also do a lot of other things. Hopefully I am continuing to show the world and general public the greatness of racing and how awesome it is and, I hope, help grow the sport.

How did you get started with motorsports and how did you get where you are today?

Motorsports, I was always into cars since I was younger. Ever since I was five years old I had matchbox cars and all that. When I was nine years old we got SPEED Vision, and I saw these kids go karting and I was like ‘I need to be doing that.’ Four years later we were moving from Stamford to Westport and my parents, as a birthday/ Christmas present, said, “OK we’ll look into karts.”

No one in my family had ever heard of racing or knew what racing was; no one had ever watched it. So my mom took me to a go kart shop and we looked at these racing karts, it was called Bones Karting in Stratford. Then my aunt came up a couple weeks later and said, “You know you should probably look into this; it can’t be too bad” because there was a local karting association called Norwalk Karting Association.

Like so many a racer, Kligerman got his start in karts.

I started racing there, raced for about two and a half years and met some really great people. One of those people is John Kurtzman who’s still there. He’s kind of the engine builder and the overall mentor for all the kids who race there. He helped me out a lot. I missed out on the championship in my last year by a couple points, I won so many races I was pissed.

I told my dad that I wanted to go do cars, and I just needed him to help me out for one year and I’ll do the rest. So to his credit, even reluctantly, he helped me out. I was able to go do open wheel cars out on the west coast and I won the championship there, won the most races. After that, I wanted to go to Europe, but I didn’t have any money. At the time the only place as a young driver you could go for an opportunity, and there was a lot of kids getting an opportunity, was USAC midgets. I went to USAC midgets in ’07 and did 12 races on my own budget, worked at the Yacht Club here to support my racing and we did the most low budget season ever.  The last race of the season I made a national race all the way through, 60 cars showed up and only 24 cars made it and there was a scout there from a NASCAR team who called the owner and told him I think I found a kid.

So I got a test in a NASCAR car and the next year in ’08 we did a factory midgets deal with Ilmor Engines and developed their engines.  After that year I got an opportunity in stock cars through Cunningham Motorsports and I signed with Penske Racing after that. So it was a pretty quick succession. So if there was anyone out there that helped me the most I would say it would be Briggs Cunningham, Roger Penske, Bob Perona and my parents of course.

Kilgerman’s first big win came in ARCA competition.

We hear real life drivers saying iRacing is the closest thing to real life, do you find this to be true and where does iRacing excel and where does it need some work?

iRacing is by far, for the bang for the buck, the closest thing you can get to real racing, no doubt in my mind. One, the competition is out of this world.  I’ve never seen such tight competition, such tight rules, and the way you have to race each other and deal with the same guys week in and week out is very similar to real racing.

The place iRacing simulation excels is the tracks. The tracks are out of this world. I mean they literally don’t miss a crack, a bump, a seal, they don’t miss a single thing.

The only thing that sometimes I get frustrated with is that the tracks aren’t dynamic, they’re static; they don’t change at all. That upsets me because with how well they do the tracks, if you put in some sort of dynamic factor of tire rubber laying down or some sort of grip factor that would change based on how many cars were running there — or not — I think you would basically see a replica of real life racing because of how close the tracks are.

“iRacing is by far, for the bang for the buck, the closest thing you can get to real racing.”

The cars?  I think they’re getting better. The physics of the cars, here and there, some cars will be perfect, and then they change something and they get worse. It’s another moving target. The problem is how fast racing moves. I don’t think people realize that the stock car you see now on the track was designed completely differently. A lot of times they scan a chassis from ’08 and now we’re on a chassis generation seven or eight times that. And that’s probably the hardest thing for them to keep up, and that’s probably why it doesn’t always line up.  But for what they have to work with I think they have a great job.

Have you tried the newest build of the Sprint Cup car after the regulation change, and do you think it’s pretty close to what you guys have in real life?

I think it’s the same feeling we have in real life, you know it makes everything closer, finickier. Things are with the discrepancy in the deltas we deal with gone away and I think you are seeing that in iRacing: tiny things make a big change. And that’s one of the largest things I saw from that. And I think it is getting closer and closer but, again, they are always going to be limited by the fact that racing in real life moves so fast in terms of development and how the cars drive and the way we drive them. What we’re doing with the cars, setup wise . . . it’s impossible for iRacing to be there and if they are a year behind or two years behind they’re doing an excellent job.

No matter what they do with the cars though, I think that if they add the dynamic tracks, it will get rid of the ability to practice all week long and be perfect. Dynamic tracks would bring us closer to real life. Even in NASCAR we wouldn’t do that (practice all week long) because you would burn yourself out. It (dynamic tracks) would change everything by getting away from the idea of practicing 9,000 hours a week. And once iRacers figure that out, the track doesn’t change, the grip level doesn’t change, nothing changes so they can go around hitting perfect marks every lap. You’d have to show up to the track, practice for an hour, qualify and go race and you have to learn it all there. Even in NASCAR we wouldn’t do that because you would burn yourself out.

Do you use iRacing as a training tool?

“Being able to make those decisions constantly in the conscious on sim racing and then suddenly go to real racing and being able do it in the subconscious is amazing.”

Yes, I’ve used it time and time again as a training tool. Say there’s a track I haven’t been to in a while, for example Charlotte this year when I was going there I hadn’t been there since the Nationwide race in May, you know a year or a year and a half. So I read my notes that I take every week and said to myself ‘Why don’t I refresh myself’ and I went out there and ran some sim races. It may not line up exactly, but the thing I always think about sim racing and the drivers who say they can’t get anything out of it . . . they don’t know what to get out of it.

What you’re trying to get out of it as a real life racing driver is the idea that you are making decisions in a race car at the race track you are going to. You may not be learning exactly how to drive it, or exactly where the lift points are, or exactly how your car should handle. But, what you are learning is how to make decisions about passing each other, how to make a fast lap, how to get on pit road. Especially in the drafting races. Talladega and Daytona, I love doing drafting all the way up to then because you can race every night, a couple times a night, and make drafting decisions which is the biggest chess game in racing; where it is all comes down to decisions you make factor-in where you finish. And being able to make those decisions constantly in the conscious on sim racing and then suddenly go to real racing and being able do it in the subconscious is amazing.

So I think iRacing is a massive tool for real life racers; road course racing obviously you can learn braking points and things around the tracks, there’s just so many things you can learn from doing things on the simulator to  bring to real racing that I just feel like there’s no reason not to.

Speaking of road course racing, there have been rumors that you are considering a move to IndyCar, but would you ever consider a switch to sports car racing?

“I can say that my intentions next year no matter what are to be in the Indy 500.”

I would.  I just think that sports car racing is not a lucrative form of racing really.  If you look at the tiers of where to make money, really there’s NASCAR Sprint Cup, maybe Nationwide, probably IndyCar there at the same level. And those sports car guys are at the mercy of a rich guy wanting to race and you being his backup pro driver. Occasionally you get the pro guys and occasionally they get a factory deal like you’re seeing in the FIA World Endurance Championship which is exploding. But, I feel like they never have great longevity.

Sports car racing goes through so many ups and downs because it’s so manufacturer-driven and there’s no real TV package or anything that funds it/  So there’s no real place for a driver to have a solid tenure and be known as just that guy unless a manufacturer like Audi commits for 20 years or so to do it; then you are just going to be jumping around constantly, and I just think that’s not a great thing.

Would I love to do it for fun? Yeah, absolutely I would love to do the 24 hours of Le Mans, I’ve always wanted to go and do that.  Petit Le Mans, Road Atlanta would be awesome . . . Sebring . . . all those things.   I love those races and I love that racing.  But, as a career choice as a driver I just think it’s not the best thing unless you have to. I can say that my intentions next year no matter what are to be in the Indy 500.  So I think we will find a way to do that for sure.  As for other things we will see where that goes.

Do teams require you to use simulation software such as iRacing?

No, I think that everyone knows in real racing, it’s kind of like fitness. I don’t know many teams that evaluate their driver’s fitness, but it’s an unwritten rule: you gotta be fit. Sim racing, simulations, a team is gonna expect that if there’s a tool out there to go faster, you’re gonna use it. It’s one of those things if you can find a benefit in it if, you can’t, then more power to you.  But if you can go use it, we expect you to use it.

I know you were really looking forwards to iRacing Indy 500, can we expect to see more of you in the iRacing IndyCar series in your offseason?

Yeah, I love racing the IndyCar.  The new one is so much better than the old one, first and foremost. Right now I’m kind of in between places, I’m moving basically. But I will definitely in the off-season be sim racing.  I’m always sim racing. It’s just one of those things that I’m traveling so much, especially with the Sprint Cup Series that I’m almost never home.  So being able to sim race in that time is impossible. But when I do find time I love it.  I enjoy it, it’s a hobby of mine and it’s something I do for fun more than anything.  So I’ll definitely be there.

Since you are the co-founder of Nootelligence,/  Would you like to tell us exactly what it is?

“We like to call ourselves a brain health supplement trapped in a 2 oz. bottle.”

Nootelligence is a 2 oz. focus shot that is derived from nootropics which are a series of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals when combined together are able to cause a feeling of focus and are the natural alternative to ADD drugs, which a lot of kids find themselves addicted to or using too often. Nootropics came about two years ago because of that same situation: kids were getting out of college and they were taking ADD drugs and they didn’t like the side effects and the way it made them in the work place, so they started looking for a natural alternative. Something that could help them focus, and nootropics was the answer.

But, the only way to get nootropics in the past was powders which you mixed yourself and were very crude, and pills which don’t work as well. So we took the best parts about nootropics and put them together into a 2 oz. shot, liquid form.  It hits you in about 10-20 minutes and gives you that same focus feeling that you don’t really find anywhere else. One thing we want to make sure is that we aren’t an energy shot, and we don’t intend to give you energy. It may give you energy but it will be calm and collective from focus, not that jittery energy you get from 5 Hour or Red Bull.

We really aim to not be considered in the energy market, more so we’ve created our own market which is a nootropics-based focus shot. We like to call ourselves a brain health supplement trapped in a 2 oz. bottle. It’s taken about seven or eight months of development of the product, and then we launched. It’s very exciting, so we will see.

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