Where is ... Loy Allen? (cont'd)

"I told [Allen Sr. that Allen Jr.] didn't have a career," Sabates continued in the account. "His son was an ARCA driver. I wasn't beating on his son, I was just stating facts. I told him I had no doubt his son may make a good NASCAR driver one day but that I knew how hard it was to have a rookie in the car."

Sabates added that if he had put Allen in the car, it would have brought "Alan out of his grave." The younger Allen, for all intents and purposes, was caught in the middle of a very, very bad situation.

"It was hard, and I felt for what Mr. Brooks and everyone was going through with all that had happened," Allen said. "As far as me and my career in racing, I didn't like the way that all happened, of course. It was a tragedy for everyone. I looked up to Alan Kulwicki and that team. We looked up to them.

"Mr. Brooks did want me in the car, but it wasn't a huge disappointment to me [to not be named to the ride] because I had some other opportunities. I knew the route I wanted to take. I didn't mind racing Busch, [and] taking my steps into Winston Cup. But Mr. Brooks wanted me in that car, and I wanted to make him happy. If he wanted me in that car, I wanted to be in that car for him. If that team really didn't think I needed to be in that car because of experience or whatever, that was fine, too."

Allen shocked the racing world by winning the pole for the 1994 Daytona 500, with TriStar Motorsports. A rookie had never before taken the top starting spot for the sport's biggest race. He would sit on two other poles that year with TriStar Motorsports, yet many credited the team's quick, but unreliable, Hoosier tires for his success.

"The Hoosier deal didn't help things, because we kept blowing out tires, and I was getting concussion after concussion," Allen said. "I was on the pole one week and blowing tires out the next week. That didn't help things."

Allen ran four of the first five races of the 1995 season for the legendary Junior Johnson, and then moved back to Tri-Star Motorsports, where he failed to qualify for numerous events over the course of the last two-thirds of the year. The following year, he sustained a severe neck injury at Rockingham in February. He missed four months, and when he returned, he was involved in yet another serious accident in the season finale at Atlanta.

After his last two Cup races in 1999, Allen stayed in the Charlotte area for several years, trying to land another deal. It never happened.

"Finding the right sponsorship and getting things put together just became a little bit harder in the late '90s," Allen said. "I never found the right opportunity to get in the right car. I stayed in Charlotte for several years, kinda pursuing it. I'm back in Raleigh. It just got a little bit hard to find the right ride and the right opportunity that I really wanted to be in. I tried some one-race opportunities a few times, but they never really seemed to pan out into long-term situations.

"Now, I'm 40. I guess all the guys now are 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds. There was that transition ... but at that time, back in the late '80s, early '90s, they didn't even think about taking kids 19-, 20-year-olds and looking into Nextel Cup or Busch Series."

Still, Allen has few regrets.

"It was exciting, and it was a good part of my life," Allen said. "I loved every minute of it. I would've liked to have gotten a lot farther in racing, but of course, the accident kinda pushed me back a little bit. Sponsorship got kinda lean, I guess. Its kinda feast or famine, as far as sponsorship goes. But it was exciting to me. I wouldn't take anything for it."