Modest though he was, Jim Clark surely looked forward to demonstrating to the Railbirds that the young Scot and the strange little green car ridiculed as a "funny car" was more than a match for the front-engined roadsters that ruled the roost at Indy.

Qualifying

While Parnelli Jones and J.C. Agajanian had the luxury of spending the month of May 1963 at the Speedway dialing in Old Calhoun for May 30th 1963, that month was a whirlwind for Jim Clark and Team Lotus. On Saturday, May 11th, Clark competed in the BRDC International Trophy race at Silverstone and finished in first place in the Lotus 25 Grand Prix car. On Saturday, May 18th, Clark reported to Indy for qualifying in the Lotus 29 Indianapolis car, with 200,000 people watching, as the battle between Them and Us began to take shape. Parnelli Jones rose to the occasion and Old Calhoun, always a good qualifier, took pole position at 151.153 mph in dangerous gusty conditions, Jones hugging the white line at the apron of the racetrack. Appropriately, this was the very last time a front-engined car was to be on pole at Indy.

Jim Clark in his green No. 92 Lotus-Ford with yellow racing stripes (chassis 29/3) qualified the rear-engined car in the middle of the second row at 149.75, which placed him just behind crowd-pleaser Jim Hurtibise in the legendary hard-luck, rose-colored No. 56 Novi, sponsored by the Hotel Tropicana. Clark's teammate, Dan Gurney, qualified the Lotus-Ford team car in twelfth place, on the outside of the fourth row. In qualifying, Gurney's car was No. 93 and painted identically to Clark's (it was chassis 29/1, the Lotus 29 prototype "Mule" on which all the development work was done), but before the race it was resprayed in American Racing colors, a white body with blue racing stripes.

In all, there were four rear-engined cars in the field, Ford vs. Chevy. Mickey Thompson had two low-slung rear-engined chassis of his own construction and design, with aluminum block, 255 cubic inch, Chevy V8 engines. Earlier in the month of May, Clark's fellow Grand Prix colleague and reigning Formula One champion, Graham Hill, had passed his rookie test in Thompson's newest car but later on hit the wall in Turn 3 and never made the race. Gurney too had kissed the wall during a practice session in Turn 1, writing off No. 91, his original car (chassis 29/2), which is why Gurney ended up qualifying the third chassis (chassis 29/1), Clark's back-up car.

After qualifying at Indy, it was back to Europe for Clark, Hill and Gurney for the first Championship race of the Formula One season, the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday, May 26th, which Hill won. Clark and Gurney should have stayed at Indy; Gurney went out after 25 laps with crown and pinion problems in his Brabham-Climax and Clark's Lotus went out while leading with a seized gearbox on lap 78 of the 100 lap race, being classified in eighth place. On Monday morning, Clark began his trek back to the American Midwest taking the early plane from Nice to London, and flying from there to Chicago to make the 1963 Indy 500, which was run that year on Thursday, May 30th 1963.

The Race

Back home in Indiana, it was a glorious day for a race. On the farm in Scotland where it was the end of the afternoon and early evening when the race took place, Jimmy's father, James Clark Senior, was on the telephone to the Lotus factory, which had a direct link with Indianapolis; Mr. Clark listened to the commentary from Lotus and relayed the substance to those at the farmhouse at Edington Mains.

There was much for the Senior James Clark to report. As the Chrysler 300 pace car pulled off and starter Pat Vidan waved the green flag, a mighty fight erupted amongst the powerful roadsters, with Jones taking the first two corners but hard-charging Jim Hurtibise in the supercharged Novi very much his equal, racing side by side, up close to the fence for a bit until Hurtibise pulled ahead of Jones on the backstretch to take back the lead from Old Calhoun. The Novi had the honor of leading lap 1, much to the delight of the crowd that had seen the fast but unreliable Novi's go fast but then go out in so many previous Indy 500's.

Team Lotus did not challenge the frontrunners in the early stages. Clark made a conservative start and temporarily fell back from fifth to eleventh place, engulfed by the taller, snarling roadsters all around him. Gurney, from his position on the outside of the fourth row was more aggressive and running up close to the wall, passing roadsters on the outside and kicking up the dust as he was fighting his way up toward the lead pack. Gurney had been through the harrowing experience of lap 1 at Indy the year before so in the early laps Gurney was leading the way for Clark, who tucked in behind and in Gurney's slipstream.

An early yellow flag came out for then-rookie Bobby Unser, who crashed his yellow Novi in Turn 1; Jones was in the lead when the race re-started and he stretched it out, trying to build up a lead before he had to come in for the first of his three pit stops. Jim Hurtibise in the Novi and Roger McCluskey in the No. 14 black and gold Konstant Hot Special, another fast Watson roadster that was newer than Old Calhoun and was running up front all day, traded second place with Hurtibise's Novi behind Parnelli Jones. By lap 40, McCluskey had the upper hand and passed Hurtibise for second place, 20 seconds down to Old Calhoun.

On lap 67, Jim Clark took the lead, the Watson's of Jones and McCluskey had to pit; and Dan Gurney was now in second place. The Ford executives back in Dearborn, Michigan and the team members listening on the line at the Lotus factory in England must have been giddy with excitement that the one pit stop strategy they planned on from the outset of the Indy project might just work. Would they actually be able to pull this off? James Clark Senior listened attentively to the commentary on the telephone link as his son took the lead and he must have been bursting with pride, as darkness began to fall on the moors of Berwickshire.

Agajanian's crew clearly knew what they were up against and were determined not to repeat the mistakes of prior years with Calhoun and its problematic pit stops. As Jones pulled in for his first pit stop, the car went up on its air jacks and the crew went into action: one crew member put a special tube-like asbestos shroud over the exhaust pipe so that the refueller with the hose and nozzle, Chief Mechanic Johnnie Pouelsen, could get to the aircraft-style gas tank latches located behind the cockpit without starting a fire. Pouelsen held his breath to protect against the toxic fumes while the nitro-methanol blend went in.

A USAC official behind the pit wall held a fire extinguisher at the ready. Meanwhile, other crew members hammered off the knock-off hubs (no air guns in those days) to change three of the four Firestone tires (the left front, which gets the least use at Indy stayed on), Parnelli got a drink, a new set of goggles and a clean windshield and was off in only 22 seconds. To save the clutch, all five crew members pushed the car off as it came off the jacks, grabbing on the roll bar and nerf bars as handles, one mechanic falling to the ground after giving a final oomph to get Old Calhoun underway.

Then it was Jim Clark's turn. Clark came in to pit on lap 96 - almost halfway through the 200 lap race - for his one and only pit stop but it did not go smoothly. Team Lotus had a special full-body jacking platform to raise the car up pneumatically once it came in but as Jimmy approached the lift a crew member motioned to slow down and Clark did just that, but came almost to a halt as he got to the lift and the car lost momentum. The crew virtually dragged the Lotus-Ford into the proper position on the lift so the car could be jacked up and the tires changed, losing valuable seconds in the process. One crew member gave Jimmy clean goggles and opened the breather vent for the gas tank in one elegant motion, as Clark gratefully slugged down a cup of water.

Shortly after Clark's pit stop, the Novi of Hurtibise retired on lap 102 with an oil leak, to the collective sigh of the disappointed crowd, always pulling for the underdog.

By lap 126, Parnelli Jones had long since retaken the lead from Clark but had to go in for his second pit stop. Luckily for him, the second pit stop was virtually identical to the first. Car owner Agajanian calmly watched over the pit crew, stopwatch in hand. Traces of oil could be seen on the rear flanks of Old Calhoun.

On lap 162, taking advantage of a yellow flag, Old Calhoun headed for the pits from the lead for Parnelli's third and last pit stop and in these days of no pit speed limiters, Parnelli was coming in hot and fast. Knowing how critical it was to get Old Calhoun in and out in record time, J.C. Agajanian himself was out on the pit wall in his Stetson hat, by now in a high state of agitation, wildly gesticulating to slow Jones down as he came into the pits, acting as an unofficial number of the pit crew.

Agajanian stopped a rolling tire with his foot from the top of the pit wall; in all the excitement he had even stopped holding his ever-present stopwatch. The external oil tank on the left side of the car near the engine was still relatively clean-looking but windswept streaks of oil were beginning to be visible at the rear of the car, low down under the tail, below the number "98" and by the nerf bars.

Parnelli Jones, the man at the center of all this frenetic activity, was rock solid and the picture of calm and confidence while he waited for the pit stop to be completed, despite knowing that every moment he spent there in the pits, Jim Clark was catching him out on the Speedway in the Lotus-Ford. Again the pit stop was flawless and when Jones rejoined the race with just thirty-eight laps to go, Clark was coming down the front straightaway but Old Calhoun was still in the lead as Jones blasted off down pit lane, exited the pits and headed for Turn 1.

With everyone's pit stops over, the leaders got down to business and at one point Clark closed to four and one-half seconds on Jones. In the pits, the Agajanian crew were flailing their arms urging Jones to go faster every time Old Calhoun passed the pits. By lap 170, Jones was still turning laps over 150 mph, despite a visibly smoking engine, desperately trying to keep the Lotus at bay.

On lap 182, Eddie Sachs, in the newest Watson roadster, the No. 9 yellow and red Bryant Heating and Cooling Special, lost a wheel and crashed in the north chute just ahead of Jones who drove down low on the racetrack to avoid debris from the accident. The yellow flags came out and slowed the field. Sachs had spun into the infield a few laps earlier but had managed to restart: this time, however, he was out of the race.

With only seven laps left, the green flag came out on lap 193. Clark maintained station in second place, 21 seconds behind Jones, whose engine continued to smoke as he backed off in the turns. Clark believed that Jones was dropping oil and made no attempt to chase down the Watson roadster in the closing stages of the race, thinking that the car might self-destruct or be black-flagged by the USAC officials. Indeed, at the drivers' meeting before the race, Chief Steward Harlan Fengler had made a point of telling the drivers that any oil seen discharged from a car would result in immediate disqualification, as had happened earlier in the race to the Novi of Jim Hurtibise.

On lap 198, more evidence was displayed that the track was becoming an oil patch, as Roger McCluskey, who had run in the top ten all day and was up to third in the black and gold Konstant Hot Special, spun in Turn 3, later on blaming the oil being dropped by Old Calhoun as the culprit and the cause of his spin.

Down on the pit lane, Harlen Fengler stood poised to show the black flag to Jones which, at that stage of the race, would have handed the victory to Clark, to Them, to the funny cars. Fengler had been around the Speedway almost from its inception. He had driven in the 1923 Indy 500 forty years earlier to the day and finished down in sixteenth place, completing only 69 laps. Fengler drove that year for Cliff Durant, the millionaire son of William Durant, founder of General Motors. In the 1926 Indy 500, the two switched roles, with Cliff Durant driving a "Fengler" chassis with a supercharged Locomobile engine. In both outings at Indy, Fengler or his car went out early because of gas tank leaks.

In the 1924 Indy 500, Fengler had crashed in practice in the north chute in mid-May, broke his collarbone and suffered other injuries, and never made the race as a driver again. In short, standing there with his red fedora hat on and the black flag in his hand, he knew how difficult it was for a man like Parnelli Jones to have come this far and was understandably reluctant to ruin it all for him when victory was in his grasp.

It must also be said that Agajanian was a good ole boy around the Speedway and it was rumored that Agajanian actually played a role when Harlan Fengler was first appointed Chief Steward: they were friends as well as fellow sportsman. Agajanian pleaded his case with Fengler, arguing that whatever had happened previously with leakage from Old Calhoun's external oil tank, no oil was currently leaking and the danger had passed. Chapman could stand it no longer and came down off the Team Lotus pit stall and ran down to where Agajanian was cajoling Fengler to join the "dialogue." With the laps ticking down, this is how the Indianapolis Star described the scene of pleas and counter-pleas being made by Agajanian and Colin Chapman to the USAC officials:

"Clark's car owner, Colin Chapman, wanted Chief Steward Harlan Fengler to have the race leader black-flagged. That would have cost Parnelli the race. Fengler was ready to do so and even handed the appropriate flag to starter Pat Vidan. But Agajanian's chief mechanic Johnny Pouelsen talked him out if it. They argued that the crack was at the oil-tank hanger and the oil had already leaked down to that level. Bitter Eddie Sachs and Roger McCluskey (two other drivers) rebutted [later on] that and said they had both spun on Parnelli's oil. The day after the race they were attending a luncheon when Sachs expressed his views a bit too forcefully. Parnelli decked him with a right cross."

In the end, Parnelli was given the checkered flag instead of the black flag as he came around for the 200th lap, with Clark having dropped back 33 seconds. There had been nine yellow flags and the home team made the best of them, nullifying the advantage the Lotus-Ford would have enjoyed had the race been run under green conditions. As an ecstatic Jones wheeled into Victory Lane, the whole left side of the rear flank of Old Calhoun was covered with the oil streaks which were first visible in Parnelli's second pit stop but were now unmistakable smudges all over the rear of the car. In the pit area, Clark returned to the Team Lotus pit box to the sounds of bagpipers and his teammate Dan Gurney, who had been nursing an engine with a broken camshaft and had made an extra pit stop to check on his tires, was satisfied with his seventh place finish.

Dan Gurney had done and would do many wonderful things as a race driver in the years to come but his crucial role as the catalyst for bringing Lotus and Ford together and creating the circumstances for this classic Indy 500 remains one of his singular achievements.

Amazingly, there was no ill will between Clark and Jones after the race. Nor was there lasting animosity between Agajanian and Chapman. Had this been a Grand Prix in Europe, Chapman might have challenged the race officials, but he was wise enough to realize that it would have been pointless in this setting. And in the years to come, Chapman would sell a Lotus or two to Agajanian, who knew that winning what was to be his second Indy 500 had been a close thing.

To round matters out, later on in the Summer of 1963, the Lotus-Fords took on the roadsters on a one-mile oval in the Milwaukee 200 on August 18th 1963, and this time Clark trounced the field, lapping everyone except A.J. Foyt, whom he was coming up on as the race ended. Old Calhoun developed brake problems and was never a contender in the race.

Postscript

Jim Clark would return to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway again and finally won the race in a new Lotus 38 Powered-By-Ford in 1965, leading 190 laps of the 200-lap race and finishing almost two minutes ahead of his old adversary Parnelli Jones, who was now driving the No. 98 "Kuzma-Lotus" Ford called the Agajanian Hurst Special, painted gold.

The Hurst Special that Parnelli Jones was driving was actually Jim Clark's No. 6 Lotus 34 (chassis 34/3), which he had driven in the 1964 Indianapolis 500, going out with tire suspension failure while Clark was in the lead. In a final irony, Parnelli Jones has preserved this car - the one both he and Jim Clark drove - and he keeps it in his museum in Torrance, California, re-painted not as the Agajanian Hurst Special Jones drove but in Clark's green and yellow colors.

Wouldn't it have been perfect if these two drivers who drove the same Lotus at different times in their careers could have been on the same team? It almost happened.

For the 1968 Indy 500, STP's Andy Granatelli and Colin Chapman had forged a joint venture and intended to run a twin turbine team with Jim Clark driving the latest four-wheel drive Lotus 56 with a Pratt & Whitney turbine engine that was dubbed the "flying doorstop" for its wedge shape, and Parnelli Jones slated to drive the STP Oil Treatment Turbine known as "Silent Sam", which had whooshed its way to domination of the 1967 Indy 500, leading 171 laps, only to go out on Turn 4 at lap 197, the proverbial $6 transmission bearing having failed, depriving Jones of his second win. In the archives of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway there is a rare picture of Jones and Clark in their day-glo red STP turbines on the pit lane at Indianapolis, side by side. The picture was taken in March 1968 during a private test session.

But it was not to be. Within weeks of that picture, Jim Clark was killed at a meaningless Formula 2 race in Hockenheim, Germany on April 7th 1968, under circumstances still never satisfactorily explained, but thought to be an accident brought on by tire failure, sending his Lotus 48 F2 car into the trees. He was just 32 years old when he was killed.

Parnelli Jones will celebrate his 70th birthday this Summer and is very much with us. Last year at the Indy 500, I had the honor and pleasure of being taken around the Speedway in a pace car with Parnelli driving, bemoaning the speed limiter as we hit maximum revs on the backstretch and headed for Turns 3 and 4 where Silent Sam let him down. He still remembers Jim Clark fondly and when we pulled off in the infield near the creek in Turn 1, he reminded me that this was the spot where Jimmy's car stopped in the 1964 Indy 500 when the suspension failed at considerable speed on the main straightaway and he wrestled the car to a halt with the deft touch he had in all such circumstances.