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Wally Parks, Drag Racing Pioneer, Dies at 94

Wally Parks, who pioneered the transformation of drag racing from a dead-of-night outlaw adventure into a nationally televised sport with millions in annual prize money, died Friday in Burbank, Calif. Parks was 94 and lived in Glendale, Calif., according to the New York Times.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Anthony Vestal, a spokesman for the National Hot Rod Association, which Parks founded in 1951.

As a racing administrator and an automotive-magazine editor, Parks became a central figure in a pursuit once associated mainly with thrill seekers on the edge of juvenile delinquency.

“Wally took a bunch of black leather jacket hoodlums and made one of the greatest motorsports in the world,” Don Garlits, the former pro drag racer known as Big Daddy, said in a statement upon Parks’s death.

Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth  at 11:50 AM to Racing | Permalink

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