Now that the May issue of Motor Sport is out, celebrating the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 100th anniversary, I thought I’d take the chance to write about some of the Indy 500’s greatest drivers. Over the next two months I’ll occasionally blog about past superstars who dominated the great race for brief periods of time. I begin this week with Bill Vukovich and Parnelli Jones.

Vukovich started five Indianapolis 500s and won the race twice, in 1953 and ’54, driving a series of Harold Keck’s beautiful Kurtis 500-Offenhausers. Bill dominated the event for four years from 1952-55, but in the ‘52 race he was leading with just 10 laps to go when his steering failed, and he was killed in ‘55 while leading comfortably yet again – an innocent victim of a multi-car accident. In total, Vukovich led 485 of the 676 laps he completed at the Speedway over five races from 1951-55.

Jones won the 500 just once, in 1963, but led five of the seven 500s he started for a total of 492 laps – and never qualified below the first two rows. Parnelli retired from open-cockpit racing after almost winning the 500 a second time in 1967 aboard Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, and went on to win the 1970 Trans-Am championship and the Baja 1000 off-road race in 1971-72. The likes of Mario Andretti and Bobby and Al Unser say Parnelli was the best driver they’ve ever seen at Indy, and Colin Chapman famously offered Jones a Formula 1 ride beside Jim Clark. Jones turned Chapman down declaring, “I’m not number two to anybody, Jim Clark included.”

Both Vukovich and Jones were from California, a rural paradise in those days, and they came up through the ranks the hard way about a decade apart. Vukovich started racing in 1938, winning the West Coast Midget championship in 1946-47. Once he finally made it to Indy or Championship cars Vukovich stuck to them, running only at Indianapolis during his final years and building a fearsome reputation as the man to beat at the Speedway.

Parnelli started racing in the early ‘50s at the Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino aboard jalopy stock cars. In 1961-62 he won the IMCA and USAC sprint car titles before going on to success at Indy the following year. That was the race where Parnelli beat Jim Clark in the rear-engined Lotus-Ford’s Indy debut, when there was some wrangling that Jones should have been black-flagged for an oil leak. Parnelli (below) also led the 1964 500, battling with A J Foyt before he was stopped by a pit fire, and then finished second to Clark in ‘65. He dominated with the turbine car in ‘67 before dropping out when a driveshaft bearing broke with just three laps to go.

Vukovich and Jones raced through the height of the great ‘roadster’ era with most of the cars powered by the venerable four-cylinder Offenhauser engine. Frank Kurtis, builder of Vukovich’s cars, was a dominant force at Indianapolis through most of the ‘50s with his svelte torsion bar-suspended cars, but late in that decade and into the early ‘60s he was superseded by more effective roadsters built by George Salih, A J Watson, Quin Epperly, Floyd Trevis, Eddie Kuzma and others. The classic Watson roadster Jones raced from 1961-64 was owned by west coast race promoter J C Agajanian and known as ‘Calhoun’.

Without doubt Vukovich and Jones are among the greatest drivers to race and win at Indianapolis. Over the next two months I’ll write about a few more of the true greats from the Speedway’s epic 100-year history.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Jim Hall (below) is happy to hear that there’s so much interest in his Chaparral Can-Am and long-distance sport cars, as well as in the rapid rate of evolution motor racing went through in the 1960s and ’70s as documented in the February edition of Motor Sport. “It was a really interesting time, and I think it’s just one of those things that happens during life or history,” says Hall. “As I look back on it, the way those cars developed during that 10 years or so was really an amazing thing. I’m really proud to have been part of it.”

But when the ground-effect era finally arrived with full force it settled on a Lotus 79-like concept that has remained unchanged over the 30 following years. “What happened was everybody ended up with the same configuration and that’s where the innovation stops a little bit because once everybody’s focused around what works the best it’s hard to jump to something new,” observes Hall. “Once you zero in on what works best it’s damn difficult for anybody to say that there’s a better way to do it.”

Hall’s Chaparral 2K (below, sponsored by Pennzoil) – designed by John Barnard and driven in 1979 by Al Unser and in 1980-81 by Johnny Rutherford – achieved the same effect in Indycar racing. “We kind of copied the Lotus 79 and put together an Indycar with the radiators in the sidepods. The position of the tunnels and everything in that car was similar to the Lotus 79, and after that every Indycar practically up to this time remains the same in essential layout and concept. They’re certainly much more sophisticated in their manufacture and have a lot more performance in a lot of ways, but the configuration is basically the same.”

Does Hall see any possibility for change? “Well, I’m not close enough to the sport these days to be able to say. But it seems like with all types of racing today the rules are written so tightly that there’s no room for what we did with the Chaparrals and what [Colin] Chapman and other guys did in Formula 1. Like I say, it was a certain time in history that came along and now it’s gone. I guess that’s the way life and history works.”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Practice starts this weekend for this year’s 94th Indianapolis 500. Qualifying takes place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 22-23, with the race on May 30. But most of the talk in Indycar circles is about the future, as the IRL debates its new formula for 2012. In Tuesday’s Indianapolis Star, the IRL’s new CEO Randy Bernard declared the time has come to leave the IRL brand behind and find a new, more fan-friendly identity for Indycar racing. Mario Andretti says he hopes Bernard can achieve the many goals he’s set for himself.

“I’m excited with the prospects for Randy Bernard,” said Mario. “The jury is still out, but he’s beginning to show the elements of leadership that we’ve all been hoping for for so many years. He’s talking to a lot of people and I think he’s listening.

“Look at what he said recently about it’s time to bury the reference to the IRL. I talk to a lot of people and so many of them can’t bear to hear the IRL name. Unfortunately, the IRL entity just keeps all the old wounds open. There are probably millions of open-wheel fans who have migrated away from the series and don’t even turn the TV on anymore because they have such bad feelings about the IRL name.

“I called and left a message with Randy when I read what he said in The Star. It takes cojones to do that, to recognise the fact that the IRL name destroyed what was good about Indycar racing. I’m so happy that Randy is addressing this issue because it’s one of many things that need to be put to bed before we move on.

“Randy (above) has got a lot of good ideas and I’ll do everything I can to support the guy. I’ve said to him don’t try to reinvent the wheel. This is a series that had its glory days. A lot of us know what the formula was and we’ve got to get back to that formula. It was a series that everyone took notice of, including NASCAR and Formula 1. But right now it’s reduced to almost a club series. The drivers are barely making a living and nobody cares or knows who they are. There’s no appeal or dimension to it. We’ve got to get back to the level we had 10 and 15 years ago.

“But you can’t do that by copying NASCAR or Formula 1. We’ve got to redevelop the formula that worked for us. We’ve got to get back to venues like Laguna Seca, Elkhart Lake and Milwaukee. These are the traditional venues that are very appealing to the fans and sponsors.

“And they’ve got to get away from all this talk about Scott Dixon being the most successful Indycar driver in history. Why do they take themselves away from their tradition so that everything before the IRL doesn’t count? Where are Foyt, myself and the Unsers? By only quoting the IRL winners you’re giving up the essence of what the sport is all about.

“Indycar racing goes back to the beginning of the 20th century and no other racing organisation anywhere in the world can make that claim,” Mario concluded. “Scott Dixon is a fine driver, but let him fall in line with the rest of the great drivers. Let him go up against Ralph De Palma, Pete de Paolo, Jimmy Murphy, Bill Vukovich, Rodger Ward and all those great drivers who were part of creating the aura of what Indycar racing was all about.”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It all began with a telephone call from his son.

“Hey Dad, one of our drivers has pulled out, how about you come and drive with us? We’re testing next week, why don’t you come along?” said Justin Bell who was due to race a Riley-Pontiac for RVO Motorsports in the Daytona 24 Hours in January. His Father did not immediately accept the invitation.

“Well, it was tempting of course,” says Derek, “ but I’d been back home to England for Christmas, I’d had quite a lot to eat and drink and, although I’ve always kept in shape, I wasn’t sure about going to Daytona at the age of sixty-six in a car I’d never driven. Anyway, Justin persuaded me to go along to a test at the start of January and I first drove the thing at night which wasn’t exactly ideal.”

The initial test wasn’t all plain sailing, even for a man who has won eight twenty-four races, three of them at the Daytona speedway.

“Yes, I was a bit jet-lagged, I’d only just got back to Florida. And it was at night, it was cold, and I couldn’t get used to the sequential gearshift to begin with. I had problems changing down the gears with the paddle system, I was driving like an old woman, and I felt a bit depressed. The last time I’d used that kind of semi-automatic shift was in the Ferrari 333SP and that was about five years ago, so I was a bit all over the place. But the guys talked me through it and after a couple of days I was pretty much on the pace. I was loving the whole thing about being back in a competitive car, and being part of the whole scene again. The car is quick, you know, it’s got nearly 600 bhp and it’s quite tail-happy which keeps you on the ball. It was quite emotional and I was a bit mixed up in my own mind about what to do. So I had a chat with my wife Mistie,” he smiles, “and she said, ‘look honey, if you want to do it, do it,’ which was great, and typical of her. Then a few days later she said, ‘hey, sweetheart, do you really need to do this? It makes me a little nervous,’ and my young son Sebastian said, ‘ yeah, and it makes me feel nervous too Dad’. I understood that, with his big brother and his Father in the race, but I’d made up my mind to do one last big twenty-four hours. If it was back in the days when people were getting killed all the time, then I would almost certainly have stayed away.”

By this stage Derek had just three weeks to prepare for the race. He went to the gym, worked out a bit, got a new helmet and some new overalls, and started to get back into the routine.

“Don’t forget,” says Derek, “ I did race in 2007, I drove the Porsche 962 at Brian Redman’s event at Daytona and I beat Emerson Fittipaldi in a Toyota celebrity race, that was good. I always try to do the Goodwood Revival, too, after all it’s where I won my first ever race in a Lotus 7 in 1964 and it’s a wonderful circuit with some great memories. Then I drove the Bentley Le Mans car at Sears Point at the end of the year, and that was pretty physical, so I knew I was in good shape. In fact the doctors said I was absolutely fine, all the vital functions up to speed, you know. I mean, if I’d been out for a year or something then I probably would have said no to Justin for Daytona.”
There were to be five drivers in the RVO Riley-Pontiac – the Bells plus team owner Roger Schramm, a young Estonian called Tonis Kasemets, and Paul Dallenbach from the famous American dynasty of racing Dallenbachs.

“It sounds like a big crew,” says Derek, “ but Roger was only going to do some laps towards the end while all the younger guys would be doing double stints and I was really looking forward to one last twenty-four race, one last hurrah. We rented a big fifty-foot camper and set up home at the circuit, the families came down for the race weekend, and I felt pretty relaxed about it all, very calm about the whole thing. It’s hard, you know, to give it all up after forty-four years in a racing car.”
So, raceday came, and went. Just like that. And Derek never even got behind the wheel.

“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, or something,” he laughs, “but I feel cheated and today, sitting at home, I do feel very disappointed, yes. I wanted to finish with one last big race, especially at Daytona, where I’ve won three times, but I’ve been here before and it was nobody’s fault.”

There was relief, however, that Justin had survived what could have been a very nasty accident and which resulted in the car being packed away.

“We were running well,” explains Derek, “I’d told everybody to keep out of trouble, stay out of the way, and only come in if you have to, just keep it going. We were up in ninth place and Justin was flashing down the back straight at over 180 mph when he felt a vibration. Before he could get it slowed, bang, a front disc exploded and bits of it came through the floor and went whizzing past his ear, it was pretty shattering. He arrived backwards into the chicane but gathered it all up and managed to pull off the circuit and get a tow back to the pits. The damage was just too bad to continue – the wheel and the disc had torn the front suspension out of the chassis and the floor was nearly worn through to the fuel tank – so it was just as well we had to stop. Disappointing, such a shame not to have even had a go.”

So, no more Le Mans, and now no more Daytona. But lots of great memories in the bag.

“God, yes, absolutely,” Derek grins, “I mean, now we live here in Boca Raton in Florida, the place is only a couple of hours down the highway and it’s a fantastic racetrack. It is now the mega place for racing in the States, great facilities, especially since the money came in from the NASCAR races. And the fans are fantastic, they love it, and they come and talk to you, know exactly who you are and what you’ve done. For me, Le Mans will always be number one, but Daytona is very special and the twenty-four hours there is a tough race to win. It’s very different, of course, from Le Mans – in many ways. At La Sarthe you’re on an eight-mile lap with fifty-five cars whereas at Daytona you’re on a lap of less than three miles with up to seventy cars. So the traffic is much harder work, twice as stressful, and it’s much more physical. You can pass on the Mulsanne at Le Mans, at least you could before they bastardised it with those two chicanes, and there’s more of a flow to the place. Before those silly new chicanes you could relax on the Mulsanne too, move your shoulders around, flex your wrists and relax some of the cramps in the muscles. At Daytona it’s all point and squirt, with lots of second gear corners, 90 mph corners, but second gear all the same. There are slower cars everywhere, so you can get badly held up on the infield – but then you can overtake on the banking. Both places call for tremendous discipline and stamina but I think Daytona is more challenging in some ways. All these 24-hour races are extremely demanding, whether it’s Le Mans or Daytona. I remember in 1987, at Daytona, I was sharing a Porsche 962 with Al Unser and Chip Robinson and one of the side windows had been sucked out, so the ventilation system was ruined and it was getting pretty uncomfortable. Al was sick, I had the cramps and Chip was totally knackered so we brought in Al Holbert, who’d been working as crew chief, and he took over for an hour and a half. In the end A.J Foyt, who’d been chasing us, blew his engine up and we had quite an easy victory. I really thought I wouldn’t be able to do the final stint that year. The masseur put me on a bed of ice and I had such bad cramps I couldn’t get back into my overalls for those last few laps, but then the guys told me I’m on in fifteen minutes, the adrenalin kicked in and somehow you jump back in and you’re racing again. Of course it does help if you are leading the race and you’re about an hour away from victory. In the days when the cars had loads of grip, you were really knackered, especially when it was just the two of you sharing a car like the Porsche 917 at Le Mans – you can do that race with two drivers – but it’s not an option at the speedway, three is essential.”

The scene of three victories, then, in 1986,’87 and ’89, but also the scene of an extremely close encounter with concrete, an encounter of the kind that was surely responsible for a few crags on the famous craggy features of the Le Mans legend.

“God, yes, I am the luckiest bastard alive,” he laughs now, but not at the time, “that was in 1990, we were running just outside the top three in the Porsche 962. It was during the night when the left rear tyre let go on the banking between turns three and four. I tell you, tyre failure on the banking at Daytona is something you can really do without. The car went straight into the wall and took off into the night. I always used to run high on the banking, close to the wall, just in case something like that happened. Anyway, the front end went up in the air and that was it – we just flew upside down for a very long way. There were guys racing underneath me while I was flying…….. then it landed on its tail on the concrete apron by the pits. It seemed to slide for ever on its roof, my helmet was wearing through on the concrete, then it stopped. I could hear liquid trickling around somewhere, and I could smell petrol, so I released the belts and banged the fire extinguisher button quick as I could. The problem then was that the gas extinguisher sucked all the air out of the cockpit – and all the air out of me too – so I passed out. Boy, I tell you, I was lucky that time. But I have great memories of the speedway at Daytona and I just wish I could have started that one last race at the place.”

So, that’s it then, is it? Has Derek Bell finally retired? Again.

“ Well, um, yes, but…………well, look, for now it’s over, yes. But I’ve thought it was all over before. I’ve never, you know, officially retired because it’s just so hard to do. I always said that I would never do Le Mans again and there’s a thousand youngsters out there wanting to have a go, prepared to pay for a drive. I have never, and will never, race for nothing. Who knows, if I get another offer I can’t refuse……………..you forget how much you love it until you get back in the car.”

To translate that response, Derek Bell will definitely probably retire. Maybe. Remember, he first started talking about retirement at the end of 1988, the year before he took his third victory at Daytona. At the time he said he hoped he would be able to stop sensibly, not make a “bloody idiot” of himself, not become some old fogey in a blazer.

So far, so good, then.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine