Today’s Riverside Enduro : Racing Was Jones’ Business; Now, He Races for Business

Parnelli Jones is racing again, nearly 20 years after he more or less retired from life in the fast lane.

But don’t expect him to be racing again and again because his preferred lane now is so slow he’s practically on life’s shoulder, comfortably parked.

Jones will be sharing the wheel with Pancho Weaver in today’s Firehawk Endurance Race at Riverside International Raceway partly out of nostalgia for the soon-to-be-bulldozed track but mostly out of good business sense.

Jones, whose winnings on the track in the 1960s helped him to finance the purchase of 34 tire stores, doesn’t mind the wind in his face if it will help him promote his tires.

In any event, he’s not going racing because he particularly misses it. Although he has continued to race off-road and in celebrity races since he started backing off championship racing in 1967, Jones has never really looked at his sport through his rear-view mirror. As soon as he had the money to walk away from it, he walked.

“Anyway, winning the same race over and over again can’t be as exciting” he said.

Jones won his big one at Indy in 1963, and his tremendous competitive fire was apparently quenched. The man who would get into fights at Indianapolis victory dinners, the man who would deliberately bang into competitors foolhardy enough to run in front of him, somehow lost some of his need to win.

“Not that I was a good winner,” he said. “But I sure couldn’t stand to lose.”

Jones, 51, knew all along that his future was in business, and as soon as he could afford to begin that future, he did.

“I can’t say I enjoy business as much as racing, but racing is one thing, and all the traveling and preparation and set-up are another,” he said. “All that testing and prep work, and that traveling especially. I think I just got tired of living out of a suitcase.”

Jones never really announced a retirement but just faded away, always allowing himself the possibility of coming back if he missed it. He never did. And now, looking at some who stayed in, he wonders about those who apparently would miss it.

“A.J. Foyt,” he said. “Now that’s hard to understand. A guy like him must still have an ego to satisfy. It’s certainly not in the best interests of his car owner for him to keep racing. Same with Al Unser or Mario Andretti. Maybe they don’t have something to turn to, although Foyt certainly has other directions he could take. Just hasn’t found something that fills that gap, I guess.”

As for today’s race, a six-hour event in a street-legal Camaro IROC, Jones figures it could really be his last. “If I like it, I’ll do some more,” he said, not sounding too sure that he will. “If I don’t, well, it’s good for my business.”

As for it being six hours of driving, even though he won’t be doing it all, Jones admitted: “I’m not too happy about that. I’d rather have it a couple hundred miles, although I didn’t always keep a car together then either.”

Spoken more as a businessman than a race driver. But then, it’s been a while since he’s been a racer.