IndyCar: A.J. Foyt’s Thoughts on the passing of Parnelli Jones
A.J. Foyt shared his thoughts on his good friend Parnelli Jones, the 1963 Indianapolis 500 champion who passed away yesterday at the age of 90.
“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 IndyCar driver. We’d just become friends because we’d traveled a lot together running sprint car races on the East Coast, the West Coast and in the Midwest. We ran midgets at Ascot for J.C. Agajanian many times. Man we just go way back and had a lot of racing history against each other. He was a great race driver.
“Ascot [Park] was one of the biggest races [attendance-wise] of the year when me and him would be out there racing each other. It’s a wonder one of us didn’t kill the other because we raced so hard trying to beat each other out there. And Parnelli was from California and I was from Texas, and I liked beating drivers in their backyard, but he was tough. We raced sprint cars in the Midwest, a lot on the East Coast, and he won the championship in the Midwest and I won it on the East Coast the same year and finished second to him in the Midwest.
Two great champions going wheel to wheel in their respective No. 1 sprint cars on the high banks of Salem (Ind.) Speedway. Foyt (on the inside) won USAC’s East Coast title while Jones captured the Midwest championship in 1960.
“It was off and on that we raced stock cars, he raced at Daytona and I raced against him there. We had a lot of races together but I can’t name them all. He won some, I won some, it was just a toss up. Parnelli was a clean race driver but a hard race driver. You had to work to beat him.
A.J. catches up with his old friend Parnelli Jones at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May 2021. It was the last time they were together.