Reg Parnell

Reginald Parnell

Nation:	United Kingdom
Automobile world championship
First start:	Great Britain Grand Prix 1950
Last start:	1954 British Grand Prix
Constructors
1950  Alfa Romeo  • 1950  Scuderia Ambrosiana  • 1951  Vanwall  • 1951  BRM  • 1952  AHM Bryde  • 1954  Scuderia Ambrosiana
statistics
World Cup balance:	World Cup ninth ( 1950 )
Starts Victories Poles SR 6th - - -
World Cup points :	9
Podiums :	1
Leadership laps :	-

Reginald Harold Haslam "Reg" Parnell (born July 2, 1911 in Derby , England , † January 7, 1964 ) was a British freight forwarder , racing driver and team boss. He was active in both Formula 1 and sports car races and in the 1960s he led the Formula 1 team Reg Parnell Racing , for which u. a. Mike Hailwood and Chris Amon started.

Start of career before World War II

As early as 1939, Reg Parnell took part in sports car races in Brooklands and Goodwood in a modified MG Magnette . There he was so conspicuous by his combative driving style that the respective race management warned him about “dangerous driving” out of concern for everyone's safety . However, benevolent contemporary witnesses claimed that Parnell had little choice given the motor inferiority of his car.

The collector

As with so many other of his generation colleagues, the Second World War prevented him from continuously expanding his efforts. The racing driver soon became the collector Parnell, who enjoyed a wide range of relationships and opportunities thanks to his work as a transport company. For little money, in the times of rationed fuel, he managed to buy up racing cars from all parts of England and set them up in his workshops. He is said to have united up to two complete starting fields, i.e. 32 cars - including famous cars like the black Delage , with which Richard Seaman drove to the Mercedes factory team , or the Maserati 4CL and an ERA from Richard Wakefield, who later fell . Parnell was even presumptuous enough to try after 1945 to acquire the two legendary Mercedes-Benz W 165s from 1939 that Rudolf Caracciola had hidden in Switzerland during the war , but the Allied High Commission prevented this.

New beginning after the war

Soon after the end of the war, Reg Parnell drove a Maserati 4CL again and defeated the famous Louis Chiron in the Jersey Road Race in 1947 ; at the Grand Prix de Nîmes , he took third place.

The following year he managed a victory at Goodwood, where he was once cautioned. At the Grands Prix of Penya Rhin and Zandvoort , he achieved second and third place respectively on the Maserati 4CL. In 1949 he was back on the podium in second place behind Giuseppe Farina ( Ferrari ) at the Grand Prix of Rosario in Argentina .

formula 1

Equipped with these recommendations, it is hardly surprising that it Alfa Romeo invited the opening race of the Formula 1 season in 1950 in Silverstone as a guest a fourth model of Tipo-158 - work Armada control. Parnell thanked them for this trust with an excellent third place. In races that are not part of the world championship, such as in Goodwood and Jersey, he achieved victories in a Maserati or the BRM-V16 as well as other good placements.

At the same point, in 1951, he made the official debut of the young BRM brand with fifth place on the 16-cylinder model BRM P15 just as positive. But the result is actually sensational, as he and his team-mate Peter Walker , without having participated in training, contested the race from the last row of the grid with a special permit that would be unthinkable today. Surprisingly, they simply showed up at the track on race Sunday - but there were no further successes because the engine design with four rows of cylinders, each with two camshafts and a crankshaft consisting of two halves with a gear connection, was too prone to defects and ahead of its time.

Parnell contested further races in a Ferrari 375 with fourth place in Reims . But even with these models he achieved victories outside the dominance of the big works teams in "non-World Championship races" at Silverstone and Goodwood.

Team principal at Aston Martin and in Formula 1

Up until 1956 he was seen in a number of races that were not part of the official World Championship, but he never really gained a foothold in the actual class as a driver because he often relied on eccentric and unreliable models like the Lagonda . He was a constant driver in sports car races. After a serious accident with the Connaught Formula 1 of the racing team owner Rob Walker in Crystal Palace , he decided to become team principal at Aston Martin . He successfully led this team to the World Sports Car Championship in 1959 .

The beginning of the 1960s he was the team manager of the Yeoman Credit Formula 1 team behind the first career steps of John Surtees as a racing driver and 1963, he tried his own team owner with Lola - chassis to the promising "newbie" from New Zealand , Chris Amon , to patronize.

After a routine appendix operation, Parnell unexpectedly died of peritonitis as a result of medical complications for everyone . His son Tim Parnell (1932-2017) was later to become race director at BRM after he had previously tried to continue running his father's racing team as a temporary driver.

character

Reginald Parnell was seen by his sports colleagues as a shirt-sleeved, but always warm-hearted, cheerful person with a preference for sometimes hearty jokes, which, however, could also be expressed in violent outbursts of temperament: The anecdote is legendary that, in view of an unusually high bill in a Paris nightclub, which fulfilled the offense of usury, after a fight threw the bodyguard into the showcase of the establishment by hand .

Quote

"Reg had no special skills, but an iron will to succeed and a sparkling temper."

- John Wyer , Aston Martin Sporting Director

statistics

Statistics in the automobile world championship

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1950	Alfa Romeo SpA	Alfa Romeo Tipo 158	Alfa Romeo 1.5 L8s	1	-	-	1	-	-	4th	9.
	Scuderia Ambrosiana	Maserati 4CLT / 48	Maserati 1.5 L4s	1	-	-	-	-	-	-
1951	GA Vandervell	Ferrari 375 Thinwall	Ferrari 4.5 V12	1	-	-	-	-	-	3	10.
	BRM	BRM P15	BRM 1.5 V16s	1	-	-	-	-	-	2
1952	AHM Bryde	Cooper T20	Bristol 2.0 L6	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
1954	Scuderia Ambrosiana	Ferrari 500	Ferrari 2.0 L4	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
total				6th	-	-	1	-	-	9

Single results

season	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9
1950
	3			DNA		DNF	DNA
1951
			DNA	4th	5		DNS	DNA
1952
					7th
1954
					DNF

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1950	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DB2	Charles Brackenbury	Rank 6
1951	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DB2	David Hampshire	Rank 7
1952	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3 Coupe	Eric Thompson	failure	Power transmission
1953	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3S	Peter Collins	failure	accident
1954	Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3SSC	Roy Salvadori	failure	overheated cylinder
1955	Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd.	Lagonda DP166	Dennis Poore	failure	no petrol
1956	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DBR1	Tony Brooks	failure	Gearbox damage

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1953	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3	George Abecassis	Rank 2
1954	Aston Martin Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3S	Roy Salvadori	failure	Engine failure
1956	David Brown & Sons Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3S	Tony Brooks	failure	Engine failure

Individual results in the sports car world championship

season	team	race car	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th
1953	Aston Martin	Aston Martin DB3	SEB	MIM	LEM	SPA	ONLY	RTT	CAP
			2	5	DNF			2
1954	Aston Martin	Aston Martin DB3S	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	CAP
			DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF	DNF
1955	Aston Martin Ltd.	Lagonda DP166 Aston Martin DB3S	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	TAR
						DNF	7th
1956	David Brown & Sons Ltd.	Aston Martin DB3S	BUA	SEB	MIM	ONLY	KRI
				DNF

Web links

Commons : Reg Parnell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Profile Reg Parnell on Grandprix.com
• Career statistics Reg Parnell ( Memento from April 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Reg Parnell. www.24h-en-piste.com, accessed on March 28, 2020 (French). 
• Reg Parnell in the Internet Movie Database (English)