iRacing champion John Allen reflects on his first year of real-world racing and participating in the Mazda Road to 24 Shootout
John Allen earned his invite to the Mazda Road to 24 Shootout by winning the MX-5
Cup championship in iRacing, but the Shootout wasn’t his first time in a race car – he’s been spending the last season honing his skills in a Spec Miata in NASA and SCCA
competition, fulfilling a longtime dream that he had connected with in other ways.
“I’ve always enjoyed driving a car to its limits,” Allen explains. “I have always felt like I had a gift for driving, but my only place to apply it growing up was trying to beat curfew on the way home. But I didn’t enjoy anything more in life than finding the limits of the car. I just felt very simpatico with a motor vehicle – it didn’t matter what one.
“I would want to know the ins and outs, top to bottom. I turned that into a career in the automotive industry; that was my way to stay within close proximity to it in case nothing else ever came of it. But the feeling never died, so I kind of gathered a second wind with the boost that iRacing gave me. I am getting a late start, but I am going to make up for lost time.”
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