Famed Racer Parnelli Jones Passes Into Racing History - Named Memorial Grand Marshall Emeritus
Famed Racer Parnelli Jones Passes Into Racing History - Named Memorial Grand Marshall Emeritus, by BAJA Racing Hall Of FAME
June 4, 2024
Rufus Parnell 'Parnelli' Jones, BAJA Racing Hall Of FAMER, Champion Auto Racer and Record Setter, passed into racing history today.
"He was one of the greatest drivers of the 1960s and ’70s, winning six Indy races and four major NASCAR events while setting speed marks. Parnelli Jones, pictured, racing in Baja Mexico.
He was the oldest surviving winner of the race. Parnelli Jones, who as a teenager traded in a horse for a hot rod and went on to become one of the biggest stars in auto racing and a storied figure at the Indianapolis 500, died on Tuesday in Torrance, Calif., where he had lived for many years. He was 90. His son P.J. confirmed in an interview that Jones died at Torrance Memorial Medical Center surrounded by family and friends. He had been treated for Parkinson’s disease since it was diagnosed about 10 years ago, his son said. Jones was best known for his exploits at the Indy 500 in the 1960s, when it was still the premier event in auto racing. He was the oldest surviving winner of the race.
“Parnelli Jones was the greatest driver of his era,” his contemporary Mario Andretti once said. “He had aggressiveness and also a finesse that no one else possessed. And he won on everything he put his hands on.” Jones captured dozens of races, winning six times in Indy races and four times in NASCAR events and triumphing in off-road, sports car, sprint and midget races as well. Jones was once asked if there had ever been anyone better than him. “I don’t think so,” he told Car and Driver magazine in 2013. “You can teach somebody how to drive, but you can’t teach them that will and desire and kick-butt attitude.”
Rufus Parnell 'Parnelli' Jones was born on Aug. 12, 1933, in Texarkana, Ark., the oldest of three children, and grew up in Torrance, south of Los Angeles, where his father, Commodore Jones, was a shipyard worker. After selling a horse he owned at age 16 and using the proceeds to buy a hot rod, Jones became fascinated by jalopy racing. He would bounce his cars off trees just for the thrill of it. “I had all this desire and no talent, and I was wrecking my car every week,” he told Investor’s Business Daily in 2013.
At 17, he began racing jalopies at a speedway in Gardena, Calif. He passed himself off as 21, the minimum age required to drive there, by getting a fake identification card that dropped Rufus as his first name in favor of Parnellie Jones, which was painted on his racecar (spelling it then with a second “e”).
“You can teach somebody how to drive,” he said, “but you can’t teach them that will and desire and kick-butt attitude.” “When I was a kid, there was a freckle-faced girl at school named Nellie who my friend, Billy Calder, teased me about,” Jones told Southbay Magazine, a Los Angeles County publication, in 2013. “He would yell, ‘Nellie loves Parnelli! Nellie loves Parnelli!’ That was the name that I thought of when I got the fake I.D.”
Jones toured the Midwest fair circuit in the late 1950s, driving midget and sprint cars, and came to the attention of the racecar owner J.C. Agajanian, who sponsored him for Indy races. He might have won all seven of the ones he raced in if not for bad luck in his first. He was among the leaders in his first Indy 500, in 1961, but faded to 12th place after debris from a wreck cut his eyebrow and bloodied his goggles. He shared rookie of the year honors with Bobby Marshman. Jones won the pole for the 1962 race when he set a record average qualifying time of 150.370 miles an hour.
He was leading more than halfway through the event, but a brake problem left him in seventh place. “I can remember after the ’61 rookie year and how I had a chance to win, that I couldn’t wait until next year,” he once said. “Then, after ’62, when I was leading and long gone, I couldn’t wait till the next year. I just felt like it owed me.” His victory in the 1963 race came while driving an Offenhauser-powered Watson roadster that he called Ol’ Calhoun, the nickname coming from an obscure football joke. But the win was not without controversy.
Jones’s car began leaking oil while he led in the late stages. The race’s chief steward considered ordering him off the track, but the leak eventually stopped and he continued on, besting Jimmy Clark of Scotland — who driving a Lotus Ford, one of the few rear-engine cars in the race — by nearly 34 seconds. Jones averaged 143.137 miles an hour, an Indy 500 record at the time. The following day, the driver Eddie Sachs, who claimed that oil from Jones’s car had caused him to slide into a wall, got into an argument with him. As Jones told MotorSport magazine in 2013: “I said, ‘I oughtta bust you in the mouth.’ And he said, ‘Go ahead.’ So I let him have it.” Jones’s final Indy 500 came in 1967, when he drove Andy Granatelli’s revolutionary turbine-powered car, which was considerably faster than the traditional piston-engine cars. He was leading A.J. Foyt by more than a mile with seven and a half miles to go when a bearing, reportedly costing $6, failed in his gear box, forcing him to limp into the pits as Foyt went on to his third Indy 500 triumph. In 1971 and ’72, Jones won the off-road race that came to be known as the BAJA 1000, and he captured the Sports Car Club of America’s 1970 road-racing Trans-Am Championship.
Film provided by BAJA Racing Hall Of FAME President and NORRA Founder, Michael Noval
He was a team owner with his business partner Vel Miletich, sponsoring Al Unser Sr. in Unser’s 1970 and ’71 Indy 500 victories. Jones’s team competed in Formula 1 from 1974 to 1976, but his best finish in that venue was fourth in the 1975 Sweden Grand Prix.
In 2018, Parnelli's best motorsports friend Linda 'Miss Hurst' Vaughn, was interviewed for a wide-ranging news article by BAJA Racing Hall Of FAME, which will be revealed later this week.
In addition to his son P.J., he is survived by his wife, Judy Jones; another son, Page; and six grandchildren. After his racing years, Jones operated chains of tire dealerships and auto parts distributorships. At times, he showed a penchant for speed away from the pro circuit. He told how in the aftermath of his 1963 Indy 500 victory, a police officer stopped him for speeding on a Southern California freeway and asked him, “Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?” His 2012 autobiography, written with Bones Bourcier, a journalist, was titled, “As a Matter of Fact, I Am Parnelli Jones.”"
Obit from NY Times
BAJA Racing Hall Of FAME
