HALL of Fame sprint car racing driver Bobby Allen has died at 81 years old.
The racer was 81 years old at the time of his death.
Hall of Fame driver Bobby Allen has died at 81 years old[/caption]
Allen was a prolific karting driver in his teenage years[/caption]
Best known for his win at the 1990 Knoxville Nationals, Allen owned the Shark Racing sprint car team with his grandson Logan Schuchart.
Ashton Torgerson drove their car.
In his teenage years, Allen was a prolific karting driver.
His father, Joe, had some experience in stock car racing, which got Allen into racing half midgets at 12 years old.
As he grew older, Allen had his sights on driving with the best of the best.
“I’m from Miami and Jim Rathmann was an Indy car driver from Miami. That’s who I drove some of the go-karts for,” Allen told SPEED SPORT in 2020.
“I won some pretty good money for a kid 16, 17 years old; and hanging with an Indy car driver, I wanted to go to Indianapolis.
“At that time, sprint cars were the way to get to Indianapolis, so I loaded up and went to Pennsylvania where they raced sprint cars three and four times a week.”
Allen never raced in the Indianapolis 500, but he found success as a sprint car driver.
He was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1988.
Allen earned the nickname Scruffy for his rebellious spirit and DIY construction.
He built his own chassis and engines while racing, and also decided his own setups.
“I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel,” he said.
“Okay, maybe a lot.”
Estimates say that Allen won upwards of 275 sprint car races, 46 of those with the All Star Circuit of Champions.
Allen won hundreds of sprint car races[/caption]
Six of his All Star wins came in his 1980 championship season.
Allen’s biggest win, the Knoxville Nationals, truly changed his life.
“I was just a guy who liked racing; liked going fast. Every race was the same to me, you just wanted to try and win it,” Allen said.
“I didn’t really realize the impact of winning the Nationals until later on when a few years went by and people would talk about it – the prestige it has.
“That’s when I started realizing that was a pretty big race to win.”
