Posted on December 13, 2016.
In the early hours of Sunday, 27 November, Richard Allen quietly passed away. With his going we have lost a very dear friend who had lit up our lives in so many ways and for so many years.
I am writing these words as my tribute to someone very close to me. My friendship with Richard came about from our shared passion for motorcars, for driving them quickly, from racing them, and enjoying together all the peripheral things that come about in so doing. And, of course, our particular love of the cars that Enzo Ferrari created.
With our homes almost 200 miles apart – Richard’s in Suffolk and mine in North Yorkshire – we rarely saw each other outside the motor racing season. However, hardly a week went by when we weren’t on the phone nattering about something or other. But we were hardly next-door neighbours so we didn’t share all the minutiae of life that friends usually experience. Because of this my tribute to Richard is far from complete. I am unable to comment in detail on the vast number of interests that he had, nor the people and events associated with them. However, this disadvantage didn’t deter me from setting down in words my recollections of the life and great times we had.
Richard was born in 1938 in Essex, the younger of two sons of a family involved in the motor trade. He grew up with cars and, not surprisingly, a career in the business culminated in the Chairmanship of the large Ford dealership chain that he shared in creating. His love of cars quickly extended to racing them, most of them in the early days naturally bearing the blue oval Ford emblem. As his experience and skills developed it was unsurprising that he should look carefully at other marques and, to our subsequent benefit and delight, the cars from Maranello.
One of Richard’s immense strengths was his huge enthusiasm and energy. It was this vigour that led him to form the first ever regional section of the Ferrari Owners’ Club, the Essex Area Group. Under his guidance and direction, like minded members who fancied driving their Ferraris in competition were able to tackle hillclimb and sprint events under the banner ‘Essex Challenge’. In order to report on the activities of the group he wrote and published an Essex newsletter for a number of years.
In 2001, Richard and I agreed that he could widen the circulation of his newsletter by publishing a similar monthly discourse in Ferrari Competition News, which sexed things up a bit by offering colour reproduction. At first we titled his piece Hill Street News, but after a few issues changed this rather naff header to RA’s Hill Comment. This regular column continued in its characteristically informative and amusing fashion for a further 14 years until CompNews and its successor, CompRes, were finally shelved at the end of 2014. During all this time Richard never failed to hit a deadline and his articles were enjoyed by countless readers.
Richard, together with his arch assistant Richard Prior (whom he referred to in fatherly fashion as ‘Young Richard’) was keen to spread the hillclimbing gospel to as many Ferrari owners as possible. He devised, in May 2004, an ‘Introduction to Speed Events’, a programme of training at various venues but mainly at Curborough, which certainly succeeded in bolstering entry lists. However, it was his inspired idea of the PEP, or Performance Equaliser Percentage system of handicapping, which became the cornerstone of the Club’s Hillclimb and Sprint series. This method of time adjustment, to take into account the differing performance potential of the various Ferrari tipos, was and still is a fantastically successful way to ensure that all competitors, no matter what model of car they drive, have an equal chance of success providing, of course, they drive their Ferrari with equal skill and endeavour.
Whilst all things to do with Ferraris were central to Richard’s enthusiasms in the past 30 or more years, he also had time to enjoy other interests. He was an expert on wine and enjoyed good food, railway locomotives fascinated him, and he was a leading member of his parish council. He was skilled in and had huge knowledge of watches and longcase clocks. At one time I had a Rolex watch in my extensive collection of otherwise cheap but accurate wristwatches. ‘Rolex!’, he harrumphed, ‘they’re just the Fords of the watch industry. Now, if you want a proper watch you need to look at one of these!’, and he would pull up his sleeve to reveal a superlative and rare Swiss mechanical masterpiece. You knew this wasn’t showing off, it was just imparting some knowledge that he thought you should have.
Back to cars, as we all knew Richard was a great competitive driver who excelled on the hills. If conditions were tricky – it was raining perhaps – then he would acquit himself even more successfully. However, although he rarely had the fastest Ferrari in a circuit race he could always be counted on to do well.
One of his finest races, in my opinion, was one of his last: at Silverstone Grand Prix circuit, at the Ferrari Racing Days event in September 2014. At that time Richard already knew that he had probably contracted cancer and that his days were numbered. Despite this he, along with Chris Butler, arranged with owner Paul Bailey to take over Paul’s very rapid 458 Challenge car for the weekend. Richard drove the second of the two races and, in the unfamiliar car, drove with outstanding speed and skill in a highly competitive 32-car field, hitting a rousing 153mph (about the fastest timed speed of the day) on the Wellington Straight. Later that season, at the final event of the Pirelli Ferrari Hillclimb Championship at Curborough sprint course, he finished 3rd fastest overall and was the quickest driver of the day over the initial 0 to 64ft distance in a resounding 2.36 seconds.
After serving the Ferrari Owners’ Club energetically as the Events Director, Richard was elected our Chairman at the AGM in 2009. After his first three years of duty came to an end he was re-elected for a further term and finally retired from that office in 2015. He became a Vice-Chairman of the Club at the AGM of that year.
In private conversation, I always felt that the thing Richard dreaded most was being unable to continue to enjoy life at the hectic pace that he had been doing all his life. Some 12 years ago, in the summer of 2004, I made a note of what he said: “When you are young you do it without thinking about it. But when you are old you think about it without doing it.”
I have only scratched the surface of the life of a truly extraordinary and courageous person. Anne and I send our heartfelt condolences to his loving wife Linda at this sad time. Richard was loved and admired by so many of us and will be long remembered with the greatest affection.
