WHEATLAND, Mo. — After one of the most-consistent seasons of any Lucas Oil Speedway driver in any of the four Big Adventure RV Weekly Racing Series divisions, Bryon Allison is ready for even bigger things this year.
Allison wound up second in the Hermitage Lumber Late Model class last season, 104.5 points behind track champion Justin Wells. While Allison did not win a feature, the veteran driver posted 11 top-five finishes in 14 points races at Lucas Oil Speedway.
“It was good,” Allison said of his season. “We haven’t got to race a lot over the last few years and the technology has changed quite a bit with the springs and stuff. We’ve been trying to get back up to speed with all of that stuff and as the year went on, we got consistently faster. The end of the year wound up really well. We’ll just keep working on things.”
This year, Allison is excited about the opportunity to expand his role for the Moon Brothers Racing team. Along the Black Diamond that Allison is set to drive in the Hermitage Lumber POWRi Late Models division, the team has added a newer Rocket chassis for Allison to do some open late model racing in Lucas Oil MLRA and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series events visiting Wheatland.
“Any time you get back into an open car, it’s a lot of fun,” said Allison, who has some past experience racing in the MLRA series. “It’s exciting to get to race against some of the big teams. It’s gonna be a fun year. Hopefully everything works out.”
Allison started his racing career in 1993 in the street stock division and after a couple of years moved into super stocks and began winning races.
“Then I moved into late models and ran at Sedalia quite often and also ran at Wheatland Raceway, before it was Lucas Oil Speedway,” Allison said. “For a few years we ran some MLRA stuff and finished top 10 in the MLRA several years ago. We’ve primarily just been running late models ever since.”
Allison ran the full season in 2023, racing 23 times overall after entering only 13 races combined the previous six seasons. The runner-up finish to Wells was an impressive season, all things considered.
“Justin’s tough,” Allison said. “I’ve raced against him years ago in MLRA. He’s smooth and he’s good. Just a tough competitor. I like racing against him. He’ll make you a better racer. He makes you think. You’re gonna have to get up on the wheel to beat that guy.”
This winter has been spent preparing the cars, including getting a Durham Race Engines motor refreshed. Andy Durham, like Allison is a Marshall, Mo. native. Durham is now based in North Carolina and has gone on to become one of the nation’s top motor builders.
“I’ve known Andy since he was a young kid,” Allison said. “His family still lives here in Marshall. I talk to his dad and brother quite regularly and I’ve known Andy since way before he got started building engines. Everybody around here is proud of him. He’s done a tremendous job for a kid building motors in a single garage to where he is now.”
Allison said another exciting thing in the season ahead is the racing debut of his seven-year-old grandson, Jackson Burton, who is going to start racing micro-sprints.
“My wife is gonna have to split time between our racing and our grandson’s,” Bryon said. “This will be his first year and we’re really excited about that.”