Peter Parrott, co-owner and general manager of SpeedWorks Racing, is a respected and seasoned motorsports professional with outstanding credentials in a tough and highly competitive business. Throughout his distinguished career, Peter has worked with some of the best drivers and most renowned team principals in the history of racing: Jack Brabham, Ken Tyrrell, Jackie Stewart, Jochen Rindt, Francois Cevert, Jacky Ickx, Roger Penske, Mark Donahue, John Watson, Rick Mears, Al Unser Sr. and Arie Luyendyk.
Born in London, England, Peter started his racing career on the Formula One circuit with Jack Brabham's Motor Racing Developments team in Byfleet, Surrey. It was while Peter was working with Brabham that he became a staunch believer in Brabham's favorite saying, "a racing car is only as good as the preparation that goes into it." Thirty-plus years later, Peter still stands 110% behind this belief.
After his start with Brabham's, a team that won the 1966 Formula One World Championship, two Constructors' awards and six Grand Prix races, Peter moved to Tyrrell Racing and worked with Jackie Stewart - during which time Jackie won two of his three Formula One World Championships. This early winning experience set a standard for Peter's racing career. Peter immigrated to the United States in 1978 to work for Roger Penske. During Peter's tenure with Penske, the team won the Indianapolis 500 three times with Rick Mears and won the CART Championship four times. During these years, Peter ensconced himself in the Indianapolis 500 Hall of Fame as the only two-time winner of the Premier Mechanical Excellence Award (1986 and 1987) as the outstanding chief mechanic on the PPG Cup Indy Car circuit. In addition to racing and engineering at Penske, Peter also served as a senior management executive from 1992 to 2001.
After 10 years in trackside management operations with Penske, and wanting to return to the race track and racing, Peter joined Indy Racing League's MoNunn Race Team as team manager in January 2002. In three seasons guiding the MoNunn team, Peter garnered 34 top 10 finishes (three of these at the Indy 500) with drivers Felipe Giaffone, Alex Barron and Tora Takagi; 15 top 5 finishes (two at the 500) with the same drivers; and two wins with Giaffone and Barron at Kentucy and Michigan respectively. In 2006, Peter made a shift from the IRL arena to Champ Car, serving as test program manager for the new Panoz DP01 chassis, which hit the track in the 2007 season.
When Champ Car and the IRL merged back into a single league, Peter formed SpeedWorks Racing with entrepreneur Hayden Harris, to compete in the Indy Lights Series and the Ford Mustang Challenge Series.
Hayden Harris has a passion for everything with speed. At the age of 13 he started racing outboard hydroplanes and since then he’s seen success with Midgets and Sprint cars in USAC and the CRA, aerobatic biplanes and open wheel race cars. After designing and driving a revolutionary inboard hydroplane, Harris turned his skills to designing and building custom wood racing hulls that were used for more than 20 years. Before owning his own midgets, he worked in the pits on the famous Eddie Meyer No. 99jr. Offenhauser (“Offie”) Midget race car. His friendship with Don Edmunds resulted in his “Autoreasearch” sprint car raced by Dick Zimmerman, Jimmy Oskie and Bobby Hogle, all CRA sprint car champions. In the 1980s Harris built a Pitts Special biplane and competed with it in aerobatic competition.
He has been a co-owner of Indy Racing League and Infinity Pro Series cars piloted by Alex Barron, Ronnie Johncox and Thiago Medeiros. Harris’ inaugural Indianapolis 500 was in 2002 as co-owner of the Blair Racing Team where the team garnered a 4th place finish with Barron. During the 2002 IRL season, Barron had 11 Top Ten finishes, was victorious at the Nashville Superspeedway, and finished 5th in the overall IRL point standings.
Dubbed the “Adventure Capitalist” on the cover of Corporate Detroit magazine, Harris is a highly successful venture capitalist. After running some successful high-growth technology companies, he founded Enterprise Management, Inc. in 1977, a consulting firm aimed at turning around struggling businesses, and in 1987, he and his partners launched their first venture capital fund. Since that time EDF Ventures has raised three more venture funds.
In the late 1990s, Harris made a personal investment in McLaren Performance Technologies; the U.S. division of Bruce McLaren’s racing operations. In 2003, during his tenure as Chairman of the Board, Harris initiated the sale of McLaren to Linamar Corporation, a Canadian Automotive OEM company. Harris also made a personal investment in Software Services Corporation and was the chairman, CEO and majority shareholder when he sold it to AppNet Systems in 1998. (AppNet was later acquired by Commerce One in a $2 billion transaction.)
Peter Parrot