A Poke in the Nose Reunion at Pocono

In 1963, one day after winning the Indianapolis 500, driver Parnelli Jones punched fellow driver Eddie Sachs in a headline-making post-race confrontation.  In August of this year, the cars driven by the two men in 1963 were back on track together during the Vintage Indycar Celebration at Pocono Raceway, giving new life to the story of the confrontation that happened 53 years ago.

Jones is very much still with us at age 83, now the oldest living Indy 500 winner, but Sachs was fatally injured in the 1964 race at age 37.  Jones fully acknowledges having taken a swing at Sachs during a function at a hotel near the Speedway, and still dismisses the claim by Sachs that oil leaking from Jones’ winning car caused Sachs to crash out of the race with fewer than 20 laps remaining.

But Jones also acknowledges that despite having taken all the lip he could stand from Sachs that day, Sachs’ outgoing personality was an asset for the sport of auto racing. “He was a talker like Muhammad Ali,” Jones told an interviewer years later.  “He was great for our sport.” Indeed, Sachs was a man of many words, popular with fans and a jokester who earned the nickname “The Clown Prince of Auto Racing.”

In fact, after being decked by Parnelli, Sachs posed for a photo with a cold compress on his head and a miniature black flag in his mouth like a medical thermometer, making light of the incident.

Jones, a product of the southern California hot-rod culture, was moved to fisticuffs because Pennsylvanian Sachs wouldn’t let up on his contention that the oil leaked from Jones’ car caused his crash.  Initially, Jones laughed off the accusations, but Sachs persisted, repeatedly insisting that Jones should have been black-flagged.  Contemporary AP reports say that ultimately, Sachs called Jones a liar.  Fightin’ words.  Jones reportedly then said, “You call me a liar again and I’ll bust you right in the mouth.”

“All right, you’re a liar,” Sachs is said to have replied.

Parnelli landed a glancing blow, hitting Sachs closer to his ear than his nose.  A ring worn by Jones put a cut on Sachs’ face.  Their fists flying, the two men were separated by onlookers almost immediately.

Race officials had been moving to black-flag Jones late in the race, but his car owner, fellow Californian J.C. Agajanian, argued that any oil leak had subsided and that by that stage of the race there was oil on the track from virtually all the cars.  Storied race car builder Colin Chapman, whose Lotus was in second place with Jim Clark at the wheel, argued in favor of the black flag in a spirited trackside discussion with Agajanian and Chief Steward Harlan Fengler.  Ultimately, Fengler agreed with Agajanian and took no action, saying later that “You can’t take this race away from a man on a snap judgement.”  Jones went on to win, and Sachs was credited with 17th place after hitting the wall on lap 181.

Fast-forward to August 20 of this year, and we were at Pocono for the Indycar weekend, admiring the many vintage racing machines on hand, including the beautiful 1963 A.J. Watson Offenhauser roadster driven by Sachs.  Bearing the number 9 and carrying the Bryant Heating & Cooling sponsorship, it is the very machine with which Sachs crashed out of the 1963 race, now restored to how it appeared on race morning over half a century ago.

The last of the A.J. Watson roadsters to be built for the 500, the car is powered today as it was then by a fuel-injected 255-cid Offy, a DOHC design which dominated Indycar racing from the 1930s into the 1970s.  Today the car is owned by collector Ken Keilhotz.

Only a few steps away from the Sachs car at Pocono sat the J.C. Agajanian Willard Battery Special, number 98, the car Jones drove to the 1963 victory.  This too is an A.J. Watson Offenhauser roadster, although in this instance the car is in fact a replica – a replica so exacting that Jones himself has driven it in at least one exhibition event.   Three years old on race day, the original number 98 had been driven in 1960 by Lloyd Ruby before Jones took over for both the 1961 and 1962 500s, finishing 12th in 1961 and then making history by recording the first official qualifying laps in excess of 150 mph in 1962 to earn the pole position.

The car was nicknamed “Ol’ Calhoun” by the time Jones earned the pole once again in 1963 before going on to record what would be his only Indy 500 win.  Dr. Robert E. Dicks is the current owner of this beautiful replica.

At Pocono, both cars, along with about two dozen other vintage Indycars spanning the decades, took to the tri-oval for demonstration laps on Saturday, qualifying day for the Verizon Indycar Series race that was to take place on Sunday.  The vintage cars took to the track again on Sunday just prior to the scheduled start of the ABC Supply 500.  The rains came shortly thereafter, pushing the modern Indycar race to the next day.

Dick Simon, himself a veteran of 17 Indy 500s and 183 Indycar races as a driver, suited up to drive the Sachs car on Sunday and made quick work of passing newer cars despite the event not being an actual race.

Simon, like Jones now 83 years of age, also entertained the car owners, crew members, and event staffers during a buffet dinner Saturday evening on the grounds of the speedway, with stories ranging from providing Indy 500 cars for drivers such as Raul Boesel and Lyn St. James to tales of how racing disrupted the first three of his four marriages.

It is a cliche to describe historical re-enactments as “history coming alive,” be it actors in Colonial Williamsburg or Civil War buffs in forests and fields.  But vintage Indycars, particularly the iconic roadsters of the late 50s and early 60s, rumbling down the straightaway at Pocono, transported us to another time and place, and reminded us of that famous post-race brawl of 1963.