Racing in the Rain

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This is a really cool video of Tim and Ollie Lewellen (there’s a driver change) racing their J2-2018 in the wet recently. They had to start from the back due to a lack of practice laps, but that didn’t really get in their way! The footwell camera adds a unique perspective on the difference in driving in driving styles between Tim and Ollie. Not sure what track they’re at but it must have been miserable!

Watkins Glen, 1952

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Here's some really good video of the 1952 Grand Prix of Watkins Glen. The first half of the video is for the Queen Catherine Cup for small displacement cars. The last half of the video is from the infamous Grand Prix race that features several Allards. You will recall that this is the race where Fred Wacker accidentally hit a young boy that was standing too close to the course. This video includes footage of the cars stationary after the race was stopped. 

Now that's an oval track...

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We love it when Allard owners tell us what they are doing with their cars...the other day we found a letter from Alain Rueede showing us his latest exploits...here's his email...

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Dear Colin,
 
I hope you are well. I saw that you posted our Youtube Onboard-Clip from last years Klausenrennen on your website – thank you. It’s always very interesting to visit your site – excellent work!
 
Our Allard is going well and we just had another exiting moment with the J2.
 
We send you below a link of a very unique event we just participated with our Allard J2 last week in Zürich-Oerlikon. It’s named “Indianapolis at Oerlikon”. It’s Switzerland’s oldest sporting arena – 102 years old. It’s an oval track of only 333m length and with 44.5° banking! It is normally used for bicycle races...but one time a year for historic cars and bikes. At the best bicycle event they have 1,500 spectators – with the cars and [motor] bikes 4,500 to 6,000!
I don’t know how many Allard’s raced in an oval track till today – but in this type of small oval it could be the first!
-Alain
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Thanks for sharing Alain!

Video: 1950 Santa Ana Sports Car Races

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The 1950 sports car races at the Santa Ana Blimp Base, was one of the first major west coast sports car races. The race featured many future stars of international racing. For the winner Roy Richter, this would be his first and last sports car race. Roy owned Bell Auto Parts and had a license to sell Allard J2's on the west coast, much to the frustration who had the license to sell all other Allards in the west. Anyway, Roy's wife was out of town, so he decided the best way to get the word out on his new business venture was to do some racing. Roy won the race and gave the J2 one of its first race wins. Unfortunately Roy had to give up racing once his wife returned home. Incidentally, this video features what is probably some of the first in car (color) footage. Enjoy!

A few walk arounds of old #65

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Seeing that video the other day of that poor guy attempting to drive Bob Lylte's J2X inspired me to dig through my Monterey archives. I put together the footage you see here of Bob getting ready to practice at Monterey in 2006...and of Bob's car just before it was auctioned at RM. Seeing this footage was bittersweet and brought back a lot of fond memories. In the next week I'll post a gallery that shows off the guts of J2X 3162...I doubt you've ever seen a J2X like it. Cheers!

Racing Videos...

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A special thanks goes out to Cliff Reuter of www.Etceterini.com for aquiring the video collection of the late Suzy Dietrich and digitizing it for us all to enjoy. In this video you'll see a bunch of Allards...bonus points to anyone that will do the research and tell us who is driving what Allard. In this video, we get to see:
-1952 SCCA Giants Despair
-1952 Grand Island
-1953 Chanute AFB

Enjoy!