Robin Miller said it best: U.S. motorsport’s Mount Rushmore would feature A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney and Parnelli.
Parnelli was among those elite sports stars Shaq, Fangio, Stirling, and Shelby, etc who require only one name for everyone to know the subject of the conversation. There is only one Parnelli, and yes, he was the all-time leader of the Broke While Leading category. But winners are often the ones pushing their equipment the hardest
But Parnelli wasn't really his name, he was born Rufus Parnell Jones. And he raced a car called Ol Calhoun! That's cool, very cool, to THIS car guy!
He grew up poor—and poorly educated—and did a long, painful apprenticeship running jalopies on Southern California bullrings. Yet despite racing during what was statistically the most dangerous era in motorsports history, he was never seriously injured, and he ended up as one of the wealthiest drivers in the world.
Parnelli was the first driver at Indy to ever qualify over 150 miles per hour in 1962 and participated in the Baja 1000, raced midget cars, stock cars, sprint cars, ORVs and more during his career.
the best write up of Parnelli is at https://racer.com/2024/06/04/parnelli-jones-1933-2024
We met Parnelli at a Fast Masters event at IRP in 1993. (see the Wikipedia entry on Fast Masters) A genuinely nice man. The one thing we remember from that event was watching him in the Jaguar XJ220 as the race was about to begin. He was chatting with people, there were crowds around the car, TV cameras, etc. As the start approached he totally zoned out, you could see he was concentrating on the event to come, totally tuning out all the hubbub around him. A true racer!
ReplyDeleteIf I recall right, you got him to sign your 57 Ford?
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