Racing Legend Parnelli Jones Has Died – Hagerty Media

After September 24, 1994, it was all about Page. Nearly every conversation I had with Parnelli Jones, the racing legend who died Tuesday, was about his son, Page, who was 22 and racing in the famed 4-Crown Nationals at Eldora Speedway in Ohio, the famed dirt oval track now owned by the former NASCAR Champion Tony Stewart.

Page was driving a black No. 26 sprint car when he hit a wall and overturned, then was hit by another car. Page suffered a traumatic brain injury, and for three days, while he was in a coma, doctors feared for his life.

It took years, but Page recovered unexpectedly, eventually becoming a husband and father. “He’s doing better,” Parnelli said, then talked about Page’s latest small step back.

A documentary film, Good luck: The Page Jones Story, made about Page’s life. He was 37 years old when he said this: “I had just won a race and I hit the wall and fell on my side,” Page recalled. This was his last long-term memory. “I remember looking through the car window at the flagman and he was waving a yellow flag and I thought, ‘Throw a red flag to get them to stop.’ But it was too late. The person I fell with hit my roll cage and I was (unconscious).”

That day, PJ’s brother was racing in Tucson; IndyCar team owner and STP CEO Andy Granatelli offered his Learjet to fly his family to meet Page. PJ got on a plane in Phoenix, flew to Los Angeles to pick up Judy’s mom, flew to Utah to pick up Parnelli, then headed to Dayton, Ohio, where Page was in the hospital, still not out of the woods. It took a month before Page could be flown to a rehabilitation center in California.

It took 18 months before Page could speak, and then it was just one word at a time. It took two years before Page could get out of his wheelchair and begin the long process of learning to walk again. “He was like a six-foot baby,” Judy said in a 2004 story posted by USAC, the sanctioning body for the 4-Crown Nationals and the Indianapolis 500 when Parnelli won it in 1963.

At the start of rehabilitation, doctors painted a bleak picture. “One of the doctors told me that he would need 24-hour-a-day assistance for the rest of his life, as well as a special training table, a handicapped bathroom, a wheelchair and the whole shebang,” Parnelli said. “He gave me the worst case scenario in the world.”

Rehab frustrated Page, who Parnelli said tore nearly 150 T-shirts. “He would reach for it, grab it and put it in his mouth and just rip it off his chest,” Parnelli said. “He was just nervous; it’s not real. But he never runs out of t-shirts because his friends keep sending them to him. One of his friends sent him a T-shirt with a dotted line and it said, ‘Tear it here, Page’. His friends were completely trapped by him.”

“It was like being born again,” Page said. “The simplest things turn out to be difficult. Instead of being a baby two or three feet off the ground, I was six feet off the ground.”

After two years of rehabilitation in California, Page was sent to Indianapolis, then New York City, for more specialized rehabilitation. The page continues to improve. He married Jamie on April 14, 2001, and they have two sons.

“He’s a little different than before,” Parnelli said. “What he may have lost, he gained in many other ways.”

Older brother PJ continued his uneven but generally successful racing career, most notably a victory in the Rolex 24 Hours sports car endurance race at Daytona in 1993, driving Dan Gurney’s All American Racers Eagle MkIII Toyota. He also made two Indianapolis 500 starts, 60 IndyCar starts and 33 starts in the NASCAR Cup series.

As for Rufus Parnell Jones, born August 12, 1933: His racing career began in 1950, at the age of 17, and ended in 1974, when he was 41 years old. As he moved out of the driver’s seat, he became a co-owner of Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing, and won the Indianapolis 500 in 1970 and 1971 as the car’s owner, driving for Al Unser. Later he built a Formula 1 car for Mario Andretti; it’s called Parnelli VPJ4. He helped develop a turbocharged version of the Cosworth DFV V-8, which won every Indianapolis 500 for the next 10 years. Parnelli was an astute businessman, investing in real estate and maintaining a close relationship with Firestone, which began in 1960 when he became their test driver. He owns a Ford dealership, 47 Parnelli Jones Tire Centers in four states, and is a distributor of Firestone racing tires in 14 states.

Decades after he hung up his helmet, his name still resonates. In 2021, at a Mecum Indianapolis auction, Parnelli’s Baja 1000-winning 1969 Ford Bronco, named Big Oly, sold for $1.87 million.

So, there is never a shortage of topics to discuss. But he always wanted to talk about Page, and how PJ’s racing career was going.

Seven months ago, PJ posted this on Facebook: “Parnelli is still going strong at 90, driving my mom crazy!” But yesterday, PJ confirmed his father had died with an even sadder Facebook post. “My father, Parnelli Jones, died today at the age of 90. He had been battling Parkinson’s for the past few years. I will miss him so much!”

Renowned motorsports journalist Bones Bourcier is the author of Parnelli’s official biography entitled In fact, I AM Parnelli Jonesnamed after the response of some traffic cops who, at the time, would pull over drivers for speeding and ask, “Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?”

The day Parnelli died, Bones posted this on Facebook: “If you like racing of any kind, you understand that this was a huge sequoia tree that fell in the woods. He was among the best in an era when the best people drove whatever vehicle they could get their hands on. Parnelli won Indy Car races with a front-engined roadster and a rear-engined Lotus creation; wins in NASCAR and USAC stock cars; wins in USAC, CRA, and IMCA Sprint Cars on dirt and pavement; wins at USAC Midgets on dirt and pavement; wins in SCCA sports car and Trans-Am sedan; win in Baja off-road trucks; basically, he won at everything he competed in, dating back to the heyday of the California Jalopy Association in the 1950s, where it all started for him. ‘There’s no doubts, ands or buts about it,’ AJ Foyt said of his old friend and rival. ‘Parnelli is a great racer.”’

We leave the final word to Roger Penske, owner of IndyCar, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a NASCAR Cup team, and an IMSA GTP team, and, at 87, a contemporary of Parnelli: “The racing world has lost a great competitor. and a true champion. Parnelli Jones is one of the most decorated drivers in history, and his determination and desire to win make him one of the toughest competitors I have ever seen,” said Penske. “I am proud to call Parnelli a dear friend for many years, and our thoughts are with his family as we remember one of motorsports’ true legends.”

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