Slick Operator

A 4-year-old race car built in Glendale, a 29-year-old former jalopy driver from Torrance and a flamboyant Stetson-wearing car owner from San Pedro teamed 40 years ago this week to win one of the most memorable Indianapolis 500s.

“Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?” was a byword for anyone caught speeding in the 1960s.

It was Jones, driving a well-worn Ol’ Calhoun, built by A.J. Watson and owned by J.C. Agajanian, who survived an oil leak late in the race and beat the revolutionary Lotus-Fords of Jimmy Clark and Dan Gurney to become an icon of American racing.

Forty years later, wherever Parnelli Jones goes around Indianapolis, heads turn, old friends and new admirers wave. Jones won the 500 only once and drove only seven times here but remains one of its most revered competitors.

The 1963 race was a classic turning point for open-wheel racing, matching the conventional Indianapolis-type roadster with a front-mounted, four-cylinder Meyer and Drake Offenhauser engine against the English-built, pencil-thin Lotus powered by a rear-mounted V-8 Ford engine. To top it off, the Lotus was painted green, a traditional bad-luck color in American racing at that time.

The pugnacious Jones, for whom fighting had been a way of life as he raced his way out of the rough and tumble Torrance neighborhood, added to the legend and the mystique the next day by decking fellow driver Eddie Sachs at a luncheon honoring the winner.

Sachs said on television the night of the race that Jones’ victory had been tainted, adding, “This is the first time I’ve seen a man win the Indianapolis 500 that didn’t deserve it.”

The pair met at a luncheon in the old Holiday Inn, across the street from the speedway. It was where most of the drivers stayed before the Speedway Motel was built.

“Eddie walked up to me and said, ‘Congratulations, but you should have been black-flagged. I spun out in your oil.’ I told him the track was oily all day and he spun because he had a loose wheel, but he kept needling me until I said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll bust you in the mouth.’ ”

Sachs didn’t shut up and Jones decked him. The blow, the only one thrown, cut Sachs’ mouth and drew blood.

“Eddie went up to his room and got a steak to put on his eye, and a little black flag, and came back and posed for the photographers. It ran in all the papers the next day, but he never showed up for the banquet that night.”

The flap started when the oil tank in Jones’ car developed a leak late in the race. The leak occurred where the tank was bolted to the chassis. Drivers and crews had been warned in the drivers’ meeting that any oil leaks would bring out a black flag, which calls for the driver to pit on the next lap and consult with officials.

“There weren’t any radio communications in those days, but I knew it was leaking because oil got on my tires and I almost spun myself,” Jones said. “That’s why Jimmy Clark got within five seconds of me, I had to slow down to keep control. Then, when it quit leaking, I got back on it and pulled away.”

Clark’s version, as told to Mike Kupper, a Times assistant sports editor then of the Milwaukee Journal, was that as he got closer to Jones he saw the oil and backed off for safety purposes.

“I saw what Sachs did and I didn’t want to do the same thing,” Clark was quoted. “I’d skidded a bit myself.”

Sachs had spun once and continued racing, only to drop out later when a wheel came off his car.

Drama in the pits, in the race’s finishing laps, only fueled the feud.

With the oil dripping on the racing surface, Colin Chapman, English builder of the Lotus-Fords, protested to the chief steward that Jones should be black flagged. Agajanian, sensing what was happening, raced to the control tower and argued that the leaking had stopped.

“It had been blowing oil, but I didn’t think it was enough to make it dangerous for anyone,” Agajanian told Bob Thomas, who was covering the race for The Times. “A lot of the other cars were blowing more oil. Then ours quit leaking.”

Indeed it had. The oil level had dropped below the point of the faulty bolt, so no more was escaping.

Chief steward Harlan Fengler was convinced and put aside the black flag. Later, he said, “You can’t take this race away from a man on snap judgment.”

Rodger Ward, a two-time 500 winner who finished fourth that day, agreed with Fengler’s decision.

“When a guy worked that hard and was that close to the finish, I don’t see how you could justify the black flag,” Ward said.

The sight of Agajanian in his familiar Stetson, one of the most recognizable owners in Speedway history, arguing his case with Fengler prompted the crowd to roar its approval when J.C. went running down pit lane to the tower.

Jones said there was no way he would have stopped, even if Fengler had waved the black flag.

“Not with only a lap or two to go in the Indianapolis 500, I wouldn’t,” he said defiantly this week, still appearing as fit as he was 40 years ago.

“When we [got to Indianapolis] in ‘63, we pretty well had the field covered, but we didn’t know what to expect from the Fords that Chapman brought over from England. They were so small we called them go-karts. It was their first year here.”

Their appearance did not sit well with the American racing establishment, content with their bulkier front-engine machines.

Robert C. Wilke, a Milwaukee businessman whose cars finished fourth with Ward and fifth with Don Branson, might have forecast the future in discussing the entry of Clark and Gurney in factory-backed Fords.

“If the auto companies want to spend over $2 million to use this as a proving ground, then they can have the place,” Wilke said. “If they want to spend $2 million dollars, the interest of the private car owner, such as myself, will diminish.”

Ol’ Calhoun -- officially Agajanian’s Willard Battery Special -- which now is in the Speedway Hall of Fame Museum, certainly didn’t fit that category.

“It probably cost 25 to 30 thousand dollars and an Offy engine cost about 10 grand,” Jones said. “Lloyd Ruby drove it the first year at Indy and then I drove it four more years. After ‘62, when I won the pole and ran the first 150-mph lap at the speedway, I got a tire-test job and put probably more than 1,000 miles on the car between races.”

Cary Agajanian, J.C.’s oldest son, remembers working on the crew of Ol’ Calhoun while living in the basement of a friend’s home in Indianapolis when the car was housed in a speedway garage.

“We would tow the car from Los Angeles in a trailer behind a station wagon,” he said. “There were no fancy 18-wheelers back then.”

J.C. Agajanian Jr., Jay to friends, was a teenager in 1963 when the car was ready to head east.

“We lived in Baldwin Hills then and Dad would always bring the car to the house before leaving,” Jay recalled. “All the neighborhood kids would come around and sit in the seat and climb all over it. It got to be a tradition every year that we kids all looked forward to.”

The car, a creamy silver color with a gold 98 on its blue nose, was good to Jones and Agajanian. But only after Jones, in his rookie appearance in 1961, had been given a humbling lesson by veteran drivers Bob Veith and Johnny Boyd.

“I had driven Tony Bettenhausen’s car in tire tests and had some good laps so I figured I could handle my rookie test with no problem,” Jones recalled. “But when I got to the third phase, I couldn’t get those extra five miles an hour I needed and I told [crew chief Johnny] Poulsen I didn’t know if I could do it.”

Fengler suggested Jones ride around with Veith and Boyd in a passenger car and point out where he braked and accelerated.

“When those guys heard where I braked for the corners, they told me I had it all wrong, that instead of going as deep as I could that I should brake sooner and get a better angle on the corner. Well, I thought they were crazy, two old guys not used to going into a corner hard.

“But I tried it, and damned if they weren’t right. After a few laps, I was really onto it and I kept modifying their idea, but always using their acceleration point. That’s how I got up to 150 [the next year].”

In 1961, Jones qualified fifth, led 27 laps and shared rookie-of-the-year honors with Bobby Marshmann after finishing 12th. The next year, he broke the 150-mph barrier and led 170 laps, finishing seventh, despite having lost his brakes with 75 laps to go.

Although the oil incident shadowed Jones’ 1963 victory, his was the dominant car all month. He won the pole with a record four-lap average of 151.153 mph, which included a record lap of 151.847.

Jim Hurtubise, starting in the middle of the front row in a supercharged Novi, got the jump on Jones, but after one lap it was all Parnelli. He led for 167 of the 200 laps and averaged a record 143.137 mph for 500 miles, despite three pit stops. He had a 30-second lead before his first pit stop.

His payoff was also a record, $148,513, which included $25,050 in lap money.

One thing Jones does not recall is how he and Grayce, his female companion, celebrated the win.

“Forty years is a long time ago and I can’t tell you what we did, but there is one thing I remember,” he said.

“About 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, I woke up, went to the bathroom, flipped on the light and looked at myself in the mirror. I just wanted to make sure the whole thing had not been a dream.”

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1963 Indy 500 Finish

Top finishers in the 1963 Indianpolis 500. Parnelli Jones led for 167 laps, and Jim Clark for 28:

*--* F Driver Prize money 1 Parnelli Jones $148,513 2 Jim Clark $56,238 3 A.J. Foyt Jr $32,614 4 Rodger Ward $21,288 5 Don Branson $18,588 6 Jim McElreath $14,888 7 Dan Gurney $18,063 8 Chuck Hulse $12,163 9 Al (Krulac) Miller $12,513 10 Dick Rathmann $10,463

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