Obituary: Ray Allen
Ray Allen, who died last week aged 77, was intrinsically linked with Brands Hatch and the close-knit community centred on Motor Circuit Developments boss John Webb, its resident Motor Racing Stables school and entrepreneurial racer/team chief Jackie Epstein.
Allen caught the racing bug with MRS. He first competed in 1966 with one of its old 1000cc F3 Brabham BT15S, but sprang to fame on 2 July 1967 as the winner of the first ever standalone Formula Ford race, on the Brands club circuit.
Allen dominated MCD’S inaugural Formula 100 sportscar championship in 1970 in a Royale RP4. While the series lasted just two seasons – Tom Pryce blitzed 1971’s sequel – both champions became part of the Brands family.
When Fatlantic debuted this side of the pond in 1971, Allen was given a leg-up into it. Saddling a Royale RP8, powered by 1600cc Ford twin-cam and BDA engines, he won three races and finished the year fourth overall. Formula 5000, which he dovetailed in 1971, was more up Allen’s street. Driving the Team Trojan Pink Stamps Mclaren M10B, he finished seventh in the table. Having improved to sixth with the Mclaren and the Servis Surtees TS11 in 1972, his star waned the following year largely through unreliability, a legacy of an inadequate budget.
Ray competed in two nonchampionship F1 races, finishing sixth in the 1971 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch aboard Frank Williams’s March 701, but retired from Hockenheim’s Jochen Rindt Memorial event.
Allen subsequently worked as an instructor at Brands and was a friendly face at historic events. Fifty years to the day after his FF1600 victory, he presided over the Historic Sports Car Club’s Formula Ford celebration there in 2017.
In January 2019, when the club marked F5000’s 50th anniversary at Autosport International, he enjoyed the reunion with many former racing rivals.
MARCUS PYE