“I had the best season of my career in 1999, but after the season the team I drove for sold everything,” Allen said. “I was out of a ride at that point. I won 19 features and I can‘t even get a ride. Nothing. No phone calls from anybody. Nothing.”
Allen created his own opportunity.
“My current car owner, Taylor Andrews, lived right down the street from me in Pinellas Park. I‘d always been friends with him and stopped by to chat since we lived so close. He was putting a pavement car together,” Allen explained. “Taylor really wasn‘t running much. Just here and there.
“I got some sponsorship from my cousin. He wanted to help me get going again. I went straight to Taylor with this check and told him I wanted to try my hand at pavement. I hadn‘t done it since early in my career and I wanted to try it again. There really were no opportunities to get a dirt ride. All the rides were owned by drivers who self-funded their own deals.
“I wanted to give it a shot and we did it.”
Allen got back in the groove quickly.
“After only a few races we won a race,” he said. “Taylor built another pavement car and it kind of took off. I was running for him strictly on pavement. I think he was kinda getting frustrated on dirt and he was starting to have issues with his lower back. At that point he started letting me run his dirt car, too.
“I sucked right out of the box. I just won all these races the year before. I wanted to run the torsion bars and shocks I had the year before with a Wolf Weld car I had been running,” Allen continued. “I was calling Doug Wolfgang and just wearing him out about what to do and we eventually got fast. Taylor had Schnee chassis and he just ran them a lot different than I ran the Wolf Weld. The first couple races, I spun out and looked horrible. I looked like a total idiot. Eventually, we got it figured out and started running more dirt. I‘d run pavement sporadically after that.”
Twenty-three years later, Allen still drives for Andrews.
“That‘s why we never won any championships together for the longest time,” Allen said. “We would bounce back and forth between pavement and dirt. Whatever we wanted to do. We did win the 2015 Showtime Speedway sprint car championship. We never chassed championships.”
That changed in 2021 when Allen captured the Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series title.
The SSSS is a winged 360 sprint car series that competes exclusively on pavement in the state of Florida.
Until 2021, Allen had only won two East Bay Raceway and a lone Showtime Speedway championship, never a traveling championship of any sorts. In nine series starts, Allen finished outside of the top three only once, while winning one feature.
Allen is as driven as they come. He doesn‘t interact with many people at the track and is focused on getting the car the best he can.
“I‘m there to do the best that I can do. I don‘t have the money to do it,” he said. “If I‘m driving for a guy who can afford to do it, I‘m not gonna be off wondering around, getting a hot dog and chit chatting. A lot of guys don‘t think I‘m that social. I rarely leave our pit unless I have to use the restroom. I don‘t want to overlook anything. If you want to win championships, you have to pay attention to everything.
“I really wanted this championship,” Allen noted. “I don‘t know how many opportunities I‘m gonna get. My career has been so up and down. You never know what tomorrow will bring. Taylor could get tired of racing. You just don‘t know. I wanted to get a championship in case I don‘t get to race anymore.”
Allen realizes he has a lot of things to be thankful for and that he has accomplished a lot.
“I‘m proud of the fact I‘m still good friends with everybody I raced for. It never ended ugly,” he said. “I could call any one of them and talk about anything. Everything always ended on good terms.”
Allen says his wife, Melissa, a former trophy girl at East Bay, is one of his biggest supporters.
“She‘s one of my biggest supporters. She‘s at every race and I couldn‘t do it without her getting all my stuff ready,” Allen said. “We met when she was the trophy girl at East Bay. I Had won five or six in a row and we would chit chat in victory lane. I think she hated me at first because I was kind of a smart ass.”
Now 50, Allen looks at 13-year-old drivers competing from a different perspective.
“Times have kind of changed. I think they are more advanced and ready to race. They are starting to race so young in quarter midgets, karts and mini sprints,” Allen explained. “A 13-year-old today is like an 18-year-old. It was more barbaric when I was 13. I Didn‘t have computers and things to practice on. Technology is available to kids nowadays to learn about shocks. Their knowledge base is so much better right off the bat.”
His desire to compete is still strong and Allen anticipates racing for several more years.
“The last couple of seasons, things haven‘t gone the best at times. I‘ve asked myself, ‘Why the hell am I doing this? Why do I keep putting myself through this?‘ Deep down I feel like I can still run up front and win races. When I feel I can‘t, I‘ll quit.
“Winning the championship has definitely helped bring the fun back.”