INDIANAPOLIS — The thing about the shooting-star rise of Parnelli Jones is how brightly it burned. To listen to those who saw this flash of light streak past is to conclude that there was no way to miss it.
Wherever he went, he was already a stud, already somebody. It gave him clout, juice, horsepower.
Here he was in early May of 1963, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, angry and looking for answers. Word had spread that Harlan Fengler, chief steward for the Indy 500, had decided not to grant a rookie test to Bobby Unser, whom Parnelli had befriended. At the 1962 Pikes Peak Hill Climb, Bobby gave Parnelli some tips on getting up the mountain. In return, and in view of what he’d seen Bobby do aboard sprint cars, Parnelli had lined up an Indy ride for his pal. But first there was the small matter of that rookie test, and Fengler was set to roadblock the whole thing.
This wouldn’t do. Parnelli, convinced that Bobby was ready for Indianapolis, was incensed that Fengler didn’t hold that same opinion. Late in the evening, their paths crossed in Gasoline Alley.
“I hear you’re going to turn Bobby down,” Jones said.
“Yes,” replied Fengler. “He needs more experience.”
Unser noticed the Jones jawline tighten and watched Parnelli give Fengler a hard poke to the sternum.
“No!” Jones declared. “Bobby will take his test! He’s good enough, he’s earned it and you’re going to approve it.”
Decades later, Unser could only shake his head over what he saw. “Parnelli’s poking Harlan Fengler, who’s like a god at the speedway. And Fengler not only stood there and took all this, he immediately approved me for a test.”
What makes the story incredible is this: At the time of that lively discussion, Jones had only run the 500 twice, and had not won it. Yet he had the weight to square up to the race’s top official and get his point across.
“You’ve got to understand,” said Unser, “that Parnelli was a superstar at Indianapolis before he even got to Indianapolis.”
In an era when names spread largely by word of mouth, unburnished by the mainstream media or, heaven forbid, social media, Jones had tongues wagging from the beginning.
Ken Clapp, destined to become NASCAR’s vice president for Western operations, was a teenaged crewman when Jones graduated from Southern California’s jalopy circuit to full-sized stock cars. “By 1956 or ’57,” said Clapp, “if you were to rank reputations on a scale of one-to-10, Parnelli’s would have been at least a nine. There was just an aura about him.”
When Jones tried his hand at sprint cars, strangers told him, “Man, you’re Indy material.” Some of them, Parnelli learned, “had actually been to Indianapolis.” He knew that winning sprint car races could get him there, so in 1959 he hit the road with IMCA’s Midwest fair circuit. When he and Jim Hurtubise weren’t battling for trophies, they were rolling down the Corn Belt two-lanes in Hurtubise’s station wagon.
Hurtubise got to Indianapolis first, jolting the speedway establishment in 1960 with a track-record qualifying run of 149.056 mph. Interviewed over the public-address system, Hurtubise said, “If you think that was fast, wait until next year. There’s a friend of mine named Parnelli Jones, and he’ll really give you something to talk about.”
You likely know what happened from there. Driving an A.J. Watson roadster for J.C. Agajanian, Jones led the 500 as a rookie in 1961, broke the magical 150 mph barrier while claiming the pole in ’62, and won the great race in 1963. A pit fire in ’64 ruined his chances of a repeat. He drove a rear-engine Lotus to a runner-up finish in ’65, and ran well in 1966 before losing a cylinder in a car he’d helped design. In 1967, Jones had the field covered until a failed gearbox bearing parked his STP Turbine 10 miles from the checkered flag.
Watson, a pretty fair Indy authority, said that Jones was “better than anybody” he’d ever seen there. “It seemed like every time I looked up, Parnelli was leading.”
But the ’67 loss worked on Jones’s head. In the closing laps, aware that he was about to win the 500 for a second time, he “didn’t feel nearly as excited as I had in 1963.” He never again raced at Indianapolis.
He did lots of other cool things, of course. With USAC, he won 25 national sprint car features and an equal number of national midget shows. He won stock car races for Holman-Moody and the Wood Brothers, sports car races for Carroll Shelby, and the Baja 1000 twice with Bill Stroppe as co-driver. His aggression in the Trans-Am series earned him seven victories and the deep respect of team boss Bud Moore, who said, “I’d rank him just as high as you can rank a man.”
As early as 1964, Jones was building a business portfolio, often partnering with Vel Miletich and with counsel from J.C. Agajanian. At its peak, there were 47 Firestone stores, a stake in a Ford dealership and plenty of real estate. And Parnelli found family life as fulfilling as anything a race track offered; he married Judy Thompson in 1967, and their sons P.J. and Page became terrific racers themselves. But when the boys were young, Parnelli loved the ordinary-dad stuff: birthday parties, baseball games.
Less than 15 years passed between his first Indy car start in 1960 and his last off-road outings. His time at the top was short and very sweet.
But it was his shooting-star ascent that marked Parnelli as something special. Oh, to have been there when he was traveling the fair circuit with Hurtubise, or thumping Harlan Fengler in the chest because … well, because he could.
Parnelli Jones died on June 4, at age 90. The stories he left are timeless.
“He really was the golden-haired boy,” said Bobby Unser, “the biggest thing in racing.”
THIS ARTICLE IS REPOSTED FROM THE June 12 EDITION OF SPEED SPORT INSIDER
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