Wally Parks (1913–2007) was an American motorsports executive and pioneer, best known as the founder of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). He is widely credited with transitioning drag racing from an unregulated street activity into a standardized, professional, and safety-oriented international sport.
Born Wallace Gordon Parks in Goltry, Oklahoma, he moved to Southern California as a youth, where he became involved in the burgeoning automotive culture. In 1937, Parks was a co-founder of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), an organization dedicated to land speed racing on dry lake beds. Following his service in the United States Army during World War II, he returned to the automotive industry and became the first editor of Hot Rod magazine in 1948.
In 1951, Parks founded the NHRA to provide a governing body for the sport of drag racing. His primary objective was to move racing off public streets and onto sanctioned tracks where safety regulations and standardized timing could be enforced. Under his leadership, the NHRA grew into one of the largest motorsports sanctioning bodies in the world, overseeing thousands of events annually and establishing a professional circuit that gained national television coverage.
Parks served as the president of the NHRA for several decades before becoming the chairman of the board. In addition to his organizational work, he was instrumental in the creation of the NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona, California, which preserves the history of hot rodding and drag racing.
For his contributions to the automotive industry and motorsports, Parks received numerous honors, including inductions into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (1992) and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (1993). He remained an influential figure in the racing community until his death in September 2007.