Parker Kligerman rejoins Gaunt for Kansas, first Cup start since 2019

After a year away, Parker Kligerman is back in the NASCAR Cup Series. On Wednesday, Gaunt Brothers Racing announced Kligerman will return to the #96 Toyota Camry for Sunday’s race at Kansas Speedway. It will be his first start at the top level of stock car racing since 2019.

Kligerman has twenty-eight career Cup starts since 2013. In 2018 and 2019, he ran a part-time schedule for GBR, during which he notched a pair of top-twenty finished in the 2019 Daytona 500 and Talladega fall races (both fifteenth). Despite running fourteen races with the team in 2019, he did not return for 2020 as GBR signed Daniel Suárez for their first—and only, to date—full-time campaign.

Much of Kligerman’s NASCAR competition in recent times has come in the Camping World Truck Series. Although he has not run full-time since 2012, a year that saw him finish fifth in points, he has raced on a part-time scale with two wins at Talladega in 2012 and 2017. The latter came with Henderson Motorsports, with whom he has scored fifteen top tens, five top fives, and the victory in thirty-six tries since 2017. In 2021, he has run ten races for Henderson with four top tens and a pair of fifths at Watkins Glen and Darlington. Fast Checkout, a Truck sponsor, will appear on his Cup car.

When he is not racing, Kligerman works as an analyst for NBC Sports’ NASCAR coverage. In addition to his driving duties with GBR, the team said he will provide in-car updates during the Kansas race.

Credit: Gaunt Brothers Racing

After the lone full schedule with Suárez, GBR has returned to a limited slate in 2021. Following a DNQ at the Daytona 500, Ty Dillon ran four races for the team with a best finish of nineteenth on the Daytona Road Course. Harrison Burton placed twentieth in the Talladega spring race in his maiden Cup start, while Landon Cassill finished thirty-sixth (Daytona fall) and twenty-fourth (Talladega fall) in his two starts.

Kligerman has one Cup start at Kansas, a twenty-ninth in the fall in 2019 with GBR. He won the pole and finished nineteenth in his Xfinity Series début at the track in 2009, while an eighth in 2012 is his best run there in the Trucks.