AUBURN, Calif. — The Northern California winged 410 sprint teams are fortunate Jim Allen decided years ago that he would not make any money racing a bomber stock.
Instead of driving a car built by he and his brother Robert, Allen became someone who takes care of things that need to be done for the NARC 410 sprint series.
And he has done this since 1985 except for 16 years when he was living in Southern California. Not only does Allen do a large amount of tasks necessary for the series, he does everything for free.
Allen and Brent Kaeding are co-owners of the series, which means they get to do all the work which includes overseeing the advisory board that handles rules and important decisions.
NARC, which is Northern Auto Racing Club, dates back to 1960 and has had variations of the name over the years. It is now officially labeled NARC King Of The West and is the NARC Sprint Car Series that crowns a King Of The West.
That explains why most people just say “NARC.”
Allen didn’t even know what a sprint car was in 1983-84 when he won two races in the bomber. That changed in 1985.
Allen recalls, “I got into the promotion side of racing and in 1985 wrote a Brent Kaeding story, met him, and from there asked to be involved with NARC. My job was to make drivers household names and make them famous.
“Now I am trying to get things back to a membership organization model similar to what we had the first 40 years.”
Allen noted that the years 1986 to 1999 had the biggest and best shows going on with good series sponsors and averaging 35 cars for the 40-race season. Filling the stands was common those years.
“I had a business opportunity in 2000,” recalled Allen. “That meant relocating to Southern California. I laid out an eight-page description for someone else to do what I did. Nobody wanted to do the little things that had to be done. NARC effectively went belly up.
“A high-paying series called the Golden State Challenge Series started and I was the business manager for that also. But 2000 was the last year NARC had a board of directors, so promoters made the GSC the only series and NARC went idle.”
Summarizing the 2000 to 2016 situation, Allen said, “During that time some track promoters operated the King of the West Series with varying degrees of success. But deep down the loyalists and teams missed the NARC approach and much of the camaraderie and rivalries faded away.
“The 410 car counts began to slip around 2013 as 360 sprint car racing began its tremendous boom in California. Promoters paid smaller purses and still pulled in full fields of cars. At that point, 410 racing was on the ropes.”
Allen moved back to Northern California in 2017 and Brent Kaeding called him about how the NARC series wasn’t the same since he moved south. Allen brought back the series in 2017 with a new generation of drivers and the leadership was again Allen and Kaeding.
NARC was back with a good car count and help from people like the late Morrie Williams, who was a huge help in getting the series back on its feet.
Allen and Kaeding put in hours of work to bring NARC back and they have been successful.
Allen said, “I gain personal satisfaction to be able to step back from a project I’ve been working on and see it being successful. I take a lot of personal pride in that which gives me motivation to continue. But I always let other people take the credit.”
Allen is responsible for a wide variety of tasks. Business manager, bookkeeper, order uniforms, collect giveaways, work with T-shirt vendors, infield announcer, maintain web sites and handle numerous social media accounts.
But there is more.
He also sells sponsorship for the series, keeps statistics, acts as the historian, be part of the advisory board to update rule books, negotiates the race schedule, oversee the officiating staff, act as the master of ceremonies at the annual banquet and plan the banquet.
Yearly income for Allen from all these responsibilities is zero, and that is the way he wants it to be.
If that isn’t enough, Jim Allen has missed only four NARC races in 23 years.
