And yet it happened because of the strange confluence of people he met during his career at another famous racetrack - the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - where Parnelli Jones won the 1963 Indianapolis 500 in a front-engined Offy roadster, narrowly beating back the challenge from the rear-engined Lotus-Ford driven by his Scottish rival, Jim Clark.Īlthough representing a completely different racing tradition, oval track racer Jones had a lot of respect for Team Lotus and the 'funny cars' Clark and Colin Chapman brought to Indianapolis that ultimately revolutionized Indycar racing. Parnelli Jones probably never dreamed when he was racing hot rods and jalopies in local race meets as a youth in Torrance, California that sleek Grand Prix cars bearing his name would someday challenge the best that Europe had to offer on racetracks around the world with glamorous-sounding names like Monaco, Buenos Aires, Anderstorp, Kyalami, Montjuich Park, Nurburgring, Monza and Zandvoort.

In a two-part feature, Thomas O'Keefe looks at the reasons for this anomaly in his in-depth history of the last team, and the characters behind it, from those shores to competitively take the challenge to the Europeans.

Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing worldwide, and yet no North American team has successfully competed in the championship for decades.

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