One of the greatest, toughest drivers of his era, Rufus Parnell Jones, known to one and all in the racing game as Parnelli Jones, lost his battle with Parkinson’s Disease on June 4 in Torrance, CA. Jones was 90 years old and had lived in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County for all but seven years of his life, having been born in Arkansas.
Parnelli Jones was a master of going faster and performed his feats in many different phases of motor sport. From the start of his career, Jones’ prowess in any type of car, from jalopies to late models to West Coast stockers, he showed the talents that would see him find success through the many different phases of his career.
A meeting with team owner Val Miletich in 1956 started a relationship that would continue throughout Jones’ driving career – and beyond. Their friendship was long-lived, as was his relationship with promoter J.C. Agajanian, who sponsored Parnelli Jones when he began his quest to win the Indianapolis 500 in 1961. In order to win the Indy 500’s Rookie of the Year that year, an honor he shared with Bobby Marshman, Jones led early and ran with the leaders until being hit in the face with a stone, slowing him to a 12th place result, bloodied and bruised with minimal vision. Still, he persisted.
The following year he was the first driver to qualify for the 500 with an average speed over 150 mph, dominating the race until a brake line failure slowed him, settling for seventh place when the 500-mile race was done.
Jones’ sole victory in the Indianapolis 500 was controversial as chief steward Harlan Fengler had decreed he’d black-flag any driver who leaked oil on Indy 2.5-mile surface. Jones started on pole but his car developed a horizontal crack in its external oil reservoir as the race drew to a close. Eddie Sachs crashed on the slick surface and Colin Chapman, who entered Jim Clark in the first Lotus-Ford rear-engine car that was closing on Jones, appealed to Fengler, who decided the race should end without caution. Jones got his victory in the race, but that would be his sole Indy 500 win as a driver.
Also in 1963, Bill Stroppe, who’d built a Mercury Marauder USAC stock car for Jones, watched his driver win the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, breaking the stock car speed record. A year later Jones won the USAC stock car crown and the Turkey Night Grand Prix midget car event. At the close of the 1964 season, Mercury pulled out of stock car racing.
After finishing second to Jim Clark in 1965, Parnelli Jones’ next big run at Indy was in the STP Paxton Turbocar entered by Andy Granatelli. He dominated the race until there were three laps remaining, when a transmission bearing broke. After 1968, turbine-powered cars were legislated out of competitiveness at Indy, but the car – and Jones’ prowess with it – have survived to this day.
That was the end of Indy for Parnelli Jones as he signed off from the Lotus 56 turbine that year, but not other forms of racing, as he continued competing and winning in NASCAR and off-road competitions, particularly the Baja 1000, where he had Stroppe as his co-driver. He also raced and won in the Trans-Am Series, reunited with Bud Moore to debut the Boss 302 Mustang.
A major accident in the 1974 Baja 500 ended Jones’ driving career and began his stint as a car owner, with Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing. Repeat victories by Al Unser at Indy in the Johnny Lightning Special heralded his ascendance to the upper level of Indy car owners, while he also owned trucks driven by Walker Evans in a variety of off-road competitions.
There was a short-lived venture into Formula One with Mario Andretti that lasted just a few rounds between 1974 and 1976. The final race for Jones’ F1 team came at the first Long Beach Grand Prix for Formula One cars in March of 1976.
Halls of Fame? Parnelli Jones is in eight: Off-Road Motorsports, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, International Motorsports, National Midget Auto Racing, National Sprint Car, West Coast Stock Car, USAC and Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
Throughout his life, Parnelli Jones had the admiration of his competitors, both drivers and team owners. On learning of his death Roger Penske intoned, “The racing world has lost a great competitor and a true champion. Parnelli Jones was one of the most accomplished racers in history, and his determination and will to win made him one of the toughest competitors I have ever seen.” In both his driving days and as an owner against whom Penske competed, “I always respected Parnelli’s passion and commitment to the sport he loved. Our thoughts are with his family as we remember one of the true legends of motorsports.”
On X (formerly Twitter), 1978 Formula One World Champion Mario Andretti noted, “My brother and I started following Parnelli in 1956, a year after we arrived in America. We gravitated to him because we thought he was Italian and he was always up front. We became lifelong friends,” Andretti said.
Competing against Jones in every aspect of their careers, A.J. Foyt was able to see and understand his competitor’s fierce determination to win that mirrored his own. It’s part of what made them friendly competitors and friends off the track for their entire lifetimes. “Parnelli and I were great, great friends and we had a lot of racing together. He was a helluva sprint car driver, midget driver and also Indy car driver. We’d become friends because we’d travel together running sprint car races [around the country] and midgets at Ascot for J.C. Agajanian many times,” Foyt said. “Man, we just go way back and had a lot of racing history against each other. He was a great race driver.
‘I know the time comes for all of us and we never know when it’s gonna happen. It’s hard but I’m glad we had so many good times together and a lot of great memories. He was one of the best I ever raced against,” he concluded.
Parnelli Jones leaves his wife of nearly 57 years, Judy, with whom he raised P.J. and Page Jones, both of whom took to the family racing business. Their six children have lost a grandfather. There has not yet been any service or memorial planned.