The 19-year-old follows in the footsteps of F1 drivers David Coulthard, Jenson Button and Paul Di Resta, as well as three times Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, who also won the award, aimed at helping the most promising young British driver, early in their careers.
Parry won this year's Formula Renault NEC championship.
Red Bull's four times world champion Sebastian Vettel was the international driver of the year for the fourth year running.
"It has been four years coming here to a room full of motorsport people," the German, winner of 13 races this season including the last nine in a row, said at the annual Autosport awards in a central London hotel late on Sunday.
"I wouldn't mind another four."
Lewis Hamilton won the British competition driver of the year award, a year after the 2008 F1 champion switched from McLaren to Mercedes.
There were also special awards for McLaren, celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, and for Austrian triple world champion Niki Lauda, who is now non-executive chairman of the Mercedes team.
($1 = 0.6105 British pounds)
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
