Jim Hurtubise was the man who warned them all. He set a four-lap qualifying average of 149.056mph on the fourth day of time trials for the 1960 Indianapolis 500 – a new record and about 2.5mph faster than Eddie Sachs’s polewinning average from a week earlier. Then he informed anyone who’d listen that there was someone even better coming soon…
That man was Rufus Parnell Jones. And if the fans weren’t so familiar with his name – switched long ago to ‘Parnelli Jones’ – the Indy drivers who also raced in sprint cars knew him, because he was already one of the toughest nuts to crack. And he was backed by the first believer who could make a real difference in his career, and who was as ambitious as Jones himself: Los Angeles businessman Vel Miletich.
On the IMCA [International Motor Contest Association] sprint car circuit in 1959, Jones had finished fifth in the championship, despite only joining mid-season. But at 26-years-old he was smart enough not to go hunting for Indy 500 rides in two-bit junkers. Better, he thought, to get a near-season of USAC Champ Cars under his wheels post-Indy, gain experience and prove himself to the establishment through the summer, finish what he’d started in USAC sprint cars, and then go for his Indy rookie stripes in 1961.
His plan worked out tidily: Jones captured the 1960 USAC Midwest Sprint Car Series title and embarked on his Champ Car [what we now refer to as Indy car] career from the Milwaukee round, held the week after the 500. The Champ Car scene was as tough as it gets and he even had two DNQs. But a couple of sixth places and a runner-up finish at Sacramento toward year’s end proved to him that the step up from sprint cars was nothing he couldn’t deal with.
Come 1961, now with the backing of hog-farming and waste-disposal entrepreneur J.C. Agajanian (who had played sugar daddy to 1952 Indy winner Troy Ruttman), Jones had a Watson roadster at his disposal and he wasn’t about to waste it.
His rookie test at Indy was not a cinch. Initially, Jones was overcharging the corner and then braking; the best of the veterans urged him to back off earlier, brake more gently, then get back to the throttle earlier. He listened, learned and applied not only that lesson but also one he had observed while spectating the previous year. Hurtubise put in more steering angle, cornering so hard that the lateral load would bend the tall sidewalls of his rear tyres before they pinged back into shape on exiting the turn.
Once Jones had become more expert at how long to hold the slides, he started to emulate his friend’s technique, and the gains in speed came quickly. So long as he wound off the opposite lock fast enough to have the front wheels pointing straight as he went back to full throttle, the rear tyre ‘pop’ as it untucked itself and regained grip seemed to add an extra little boost of speed onto the next straight.
Source: Autosport