“He was too tall to be comfortable in a single-seater, but that didn’t seem to slow him down”
Mike Parkes remains an enigmatic figure – a jack of many trades who was close to mastering them all. This is his remarkable story
WORDS RICHARD HESELTINE PHOTOGRAPHY RICHARD HESELTINE ARCHIVE/GETTY
He was the first of his kind. Alas, he was also the last. Mike Johnson Parkes was a man apart from the world he inhabited. His outsized stature at Ferrari during the 1960s – both within the Scuderia and the road-car department – was such that he was in effect handed the keys to the castle. He had the ear of Il Commendatore and his trust, yet ʻParkesiʼ walked away to compete for a privateer squad at an age when most drivers have retired. Oh, and he also co-authored the Hillman Imp.
He remains a difficult man to pigeonhole, thatʼs for sure. Parkes was the public schoolboy who made his name at Rootes in the 1950s, propelled as much by the arrogance of youth as pencil-chewing contemplation. He was the club racer who, in his mid-30s, made the leap to Grand Prix pilot. He was the development jockey who terrorised the locals in and around Maranello in many a Ferrari wearing PROVA plates. He was the naturalised Italian who in the 1970s honed the Lancia Stratos into an era-defining rally weapon.
Parkes was all of these things and more, enjoying seemingly frictionless movement between his many roles; a man undaunted by high-stakes challenges. This is perhaps an off-hand reading of a character who is now largely forgotten by history, albeit an explicable one. He never was a name-above-the-title star, but Parkes was unquestionably blessed with more natural gifts than seems fair. Nevertheless, there lingers a sense of what might he have achieved had he not been such a multifaceted all-rounder.
Born in Richmond, London, on 24 September 1931 and educated at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire, Parkes embarked on his professional life in 1949 as an apprentice with Humber Ltd. Three years later, he first ventured trackside aboard an MG PB, which made way for a TD on his turning 21. The defiantly self-directed young man had been given the car by his father on the condition that he never raced it. His secret was safe until his exploits made it into print in a local newspaper… There followed a dalliance with a Frazer Nash and, in time, a Lotus Eleven.
Despite his talent, Parkes the racing driver largely played second fiddle to Parkes
