Being the first in the family to become a NASCAR driver sounds very exciting, but there is a huge price to pay to achieve it. While many of the young and upcoming drivers in the sport’s other divisions are generational drivers (and so are quite a lot in the Cup Series), Parker Retzlaff is young and has had to leave his family at a young age to live his dream. Coming all the way up from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, he has made quite a name for himself running the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Whileowever living away from family is hard, and doing that at a young age must have been difficult, but for him, it has fueled his racing.

Parker Retzlaff reflects on living away from family

Coming from a small town with no family history of racing, it was going to be tough for Retzlaff, but he decided to pursue it and move away from his family at a young age

“My whole family still lives in Wisconsin. I was the only one who kind of moved away by myself. I think that moving away very early can make you grow up. You’re a little bit quicker,” he told Jeff Gluck.

Parker Retzlaff was racing in the ARCA Series when he was as young as 16 years old. While that is a very common age group in the series, it was understandably hard for him as he was staying away from family. Retzlaff started his grassroots racing in Wisconsin with participation in Junior Sprints and Bandolero Cars, in which he won a championship in 2014.

“Nobody in my family raced at all. I’ve been Bandolero, and then I kind of transitioned back to going dirt racing in kind of like a full-body late model truck,” said Retzlaff.

Having started from a young age, Retzlaff impressed a lot of people with his determination as a driver. Moving away from his family fuelled his hunger to achieve NASCAR success.

“I was only racing like six, seven times a year. I did the part-time deal in 2022, and it went pretty well. So then we got the partnerships and the funding together to go full-time in 2023,” he added.

Running those ARCA races helped Parker Retzlaff gather enough attention from the teams in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Moreover, his impressive part-time runs in the latter (called the Xfinity Series at the time) got him enough sponsorship to run full-time 2023 onwards.

While he is only in his fourth year of full-time racing, Retzlaff has already swapped three teams, but one can finally say that he has found ‘home’ with Viking.

Is Retzlaff switching teams too early?

Some would say that Retzlaff has been jumping far too many teams in the short time he has been racing in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Despite the competitive finishes he has had in the past years, Retzlaff didn’t feel like he was settled in NASCAR until he moved to Viking Motorsports this season.

“I found out that I had the opportunity to take it and I took it instantly,” said Retzlaff. “I knew with who was coming here that they were building a good program with a lot of the people around here, and I think we’ve shown a lot this year and there’s still more to show,” he said earlier.

Parker Retzlaff has been contributing to the team massively. Despite his young age, his talent speaks for itself, and Viking Motorsports are at such a point in their NOAPS run that they need driver input to field a competitive car, which he has been doing really well so far.