The first time Robby Allen attended a race at the famed Eldora Speedway was September 1991. Then a budding 21-year-old mechanic in the Dirt Late Model world, he traveled to the Rossburg, Ohio, track’s marquee event, the World 100, in his first season working full-time for Booper Bare of Rockbridge Baths, Va.

There was no magical Eldora debut for Allen — Bare didn’t run particularly well and missed the 100-lapper’s starting field — but he did get to witness the first of Billy Moyer’s record six World 100 triumphs and the visit launched a segment of the Hagerstown, Md., resident’s personal story that’s still going strong today. He’s twirled wrenches at every World 100 contested since his first trip with Bare and been absent for just a handful of the half-mile oval’s second crown jewel event, June’s Dream, since it was born in 1994.

Allen — popularly known among his racetrack buddies by the nickname “Hoghead” — is a Dirt Late Model lifer, and he’s spent a lot of that life at the Big E.

Now 51 and a married father of two in his 10th season serving as the crew chief for Gregg Satterlee of Indiana, Pa., Allen was born into the sport. His late father, Bobby, fielded his iconic No. 55 Dirt Late Model at Mid-Atlantic events for an astounding number of drivers — 32 in all, including virtually all of the best who raced at Hagerstown — from 1975 until his death in October 1995, from a massive heart attack while battling other health problems, and the young Allen learned his mechanical craft as his father’s side.

“I always went to the races, and when I graduated high school I went to work for him (on the race cars),” Allen recalled. “That’s really all I did was work on a race car … that’s all I could do.”

Humor and modesty aside, Allen has made his living from Dirt Late Model racing for all of his adult life. The only time he’s had a job outside the sport was when he was in high school.

“I worked at Montgomery Ward’s in the automotive department putting bicycles together, because nobody else knew the difference between a half-inch wrench and a half-inch bolt,” Allen said, before adding with a laugh: “I also got to put the (Christmas) LEGO displays together (for the store) because it was in a mall … like Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell’s LEGO-master character in the classic holiday movie Elf).”

After spending his first three post-high school years drawing a paycheck from his father, Allen spread his talents to a long line of standouts in the division, including the late Jack Boggs, Bart Hartman, Gary Stuhler, Rick Eckert, Steve Casebolt, Steve Francis, Austin Hubbard and Satterlee. His longest stretch with one driver before Satterlee — and his most successful — was from 1999-2006 when he teamed with Eckert under late car owner Raye Vest and recorded more than 50 victories and two UDTRA/Xtreme DirtCar points championships. He also opened his own consulting business, Robby Allen Enterprises, in 2007.

Through all the years, Eldora has always loomed large in Allen’s motorsports career. It might not be his favorite racetrack, but the World 100 is his favorite and most coveted race, and he’s enjoyed two of his greatest racing moments there earning $100,000 Dream victories with Eckert in 1999 and Steve Casebolt and car owner Dale Beitler in 2007.

And Allen’s three decades worth of visits to Eldora have filled his head with countless memories from the track that Earl Baltes built — Lord, does the story-telling Allen have Eldora memories. Days before heading to the track once again with Satterlee for June 9-12’s unprecedented double Dreams, Allen sat in Satterlee’s hauler during the Historic 100 weekend at West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells and offered an assortment of his best Eldora recollections from the many crown jewels he’s experienced there.

On his first impressions of Eldora in the ’90s: “It was just a different place. Like, now when you go, it’s kind of like going to any well-run place, like when you go to Knoxville or to Charlotte or any of these places that are well run and have big shows. They’re kind of all run the same, you know what I mean? It’s not really that much different, but it was really different going to Eldora back then. Just what went on, and how stuff was done. Most racetracks you went to, it didn’t matter where you parked, where you lined up, what you did. Nobody ever said nothing to you. Eldora was just different from any other place you’d ever been.”

On one notable improvement to the Eldora facility (among many over the past 30 years) since his early visits: “I do remember going in the bathroom in the pits and there was the (toilet) sitting there with no stall … just a (toilet) in the middle of the room, with urinals, galvanized urinals around the wall. Every once in a while you’d go in there and there’d be some poor bastard sitting on that thing, sitting there with his head down. It’s like, ‘Oh my God.’ ”

On the pre-race technical inspection process when he first starting attending Eldora majors: “Back then they used to tech everybody (in a) different (way). It was all outside the pits. You would pull in on Thursday — they’d pull like six trucks in, two-by-two-by-two — and you would unload up top, kind of where the walk-in (spectator) gate is now outside of turn three. And if you didn’t pass tech you couldn’t go in (the infield pits), so there was lots of screaming and beating and banging, guys with hammers, because back then they were really strict. You had to fix stuff before you could go in. There were guys there that had, like, their whole car tore apart. I can remember Clint Smith having to drill his whole body off.”

On another difference between technical inspection then and now: “The UMP rules were so different than the rules everywhere else. Back then, STARS (tour) rules, where we ran most of the time, had stock noses like we do now. Well, (UMP) still had wedge noses. And we ran 12-inch spoilers and the cars could be wider in the middle (with STARS) … the cars were more like the modern cars we have now. The UMP cars looked like street stock cars — the sides had to be completely flat, all four tires stuck out from the body. They were just so ugly. They just had a bunch of different rules and they were strict on all of them. They had a piece of paper that had like 50 things on it, and they checked every single one of ‘em. Eldora, that was the big race, and they were hard-asses. Like, tech today is nothing like it was 25, 30 years ago. People bitch today, but it is absolutely nothing compared to what it was, and it hasn’t been that way in a long, long time.”

On the old two-day format (time trials on Friday and heats, last-chance races and the 100-lap feature on Saturday), which ended in 2013 with the introduction of two twin 25-lap preliminary programs to set the lineups for Saturday’s finale: “Friday you got two laps of hot laps and you got two separate laps of qualifying, and that’s all you did. And then only the top 120 cars made the heats. So you might go there and make four laps. That’s it. There were no hot laps on Saturday, and at 7 o’clock that first heat started.”

On his preference for today’s multiday crown jewel programs: “The nice thing is, now, you get a lot of laps, so you can work on your car. And it helps the driver, especially the ones who haven’t been there a lot. Back then (in the two-day years), a few years I helped (three-time World 100 winner) Larry Moore when he drove my old man’s car. Moore raced there his whole life and he knew the importance of laps, and he would roll out on that racetrack to hot-lap and he’d just start hot-lapping. The green wouldn’t even be out and he’d just take off, because he’d say, ‘I can get two extra laps while everybody else is just riding around, because they’re only gonna go green-white-checkered and it’s done.’ And you would see guys do that all the time. They’d wheel out and by the time they got to (turn) two they’d be wide-open and other guys who didn’t know would be running 20 mph.”

On his dislike for the casino wheel that is now spun to determine the inversion number for the Dream and World 100 finale’s heat-race lineups: “Before (with the two-day shows) they always were going to invert six. There was no spinning the wheel — they were going to invert six, period. But back then the difference between the guy who started sixth in a heat and the guy who started on the pole might be a second in time, so you’d see many heat races won by the guy who started sixth. Now, the times are so close, I think there should be no invert for Saturday. After two nights of points, that should be enough to determine that you deserve to start on the front row of a heat race. I mean, the competition’s so tight, and then they spin that freakin’ wheel … like, if they’d have spun a ‘6,’ we’d have started on the pole in the heat, but they spun a ‘5’ so now we start sixth in the heat. It’s just dumb luck. And then you go in the corner and the guy who starts fourth crashes into the guy in front of you, you lift, and the guy behind you drives you straight into him, and then all of a sudden, because that wheel said ‘5’ and not ‘6,’ you’re crashed and knocked out of the heat instead of maybe winning the heat and starting in the first three rows of the feature. There’s so much random stuff that goes on at that place, and especially now that they do have all the preliminary stuff, it’s even more, because there’s so many more chances to have stuff go wrong or go right. Before, you made two hot laps, made a lap, sat for three hours, went out and made another lap, and you knew they were gonna invert six … now there just seems to be more way more randomness for stuff to go your way or not go your way.”

On the tightening of Eldora’s competition over the years: “Donnie Moran lapped the entire field (to win the 1989 World 100)! There was a much bigger discrepancy in speed between the best car and the slowest car in the feature back then. Now, pretty much any car that gets in the race can win it. Back then, there were five, six guys that could win those races, if it was that many. And experience in longer races was a big deal back then. There wasn’t a lot of 100-lappers … kind of like now there aren’t a lot of hundred-lappers since we went through a stretch with Hav-A-Tampa (UDTRA tour in the late ‘90s) where we ran hundred-lappers almost every night.”

On the late Earl Baltes, Eldora’s famously strict and demanding Eldora founder and promoter: “That Earl ran a pretty tight ship. I never (had a run-in with Baltes), but I seen guys. And back then, the haulers were smaller. Now the trailers are longer and the cars pit on the concrete, but back then, the way it was, everybody’s haulers and cars were in the gravel, and you didn’t dare get out on that (pit road) concrete (with your car) because if Earl came through there and saw your car on the concrete there’s no telling what might happen. So, guys would crash, and just like now tear up stuff, and you’d have to set the caster and camber, so you’d sit and you’d wait, and they you’d see Earl go off somewhere — he might drive up the hill — and you’d roll your car out there real quick on the concrete where you could set the front end and then roll it back real quick before Earl come along and yelled at you.”

On one particular time he saw Baltes rule with an iron hand: “It was a guy from Mississippi, James Dean I think was his name, and I don’t know if it was him or his crew guys, but they got into an argument at the bar (under the covered grandstand) on Thursday night (after technical inspection). The bar used to stay open late, and these guys got into it with some other guys, and when they went down into the pit area later either this guy who drove or his crew guys got in a fight and beat up some other guys. Well, that Earl come down there, and they loaded up that night and he made them leave. Like, ‘You’re gone.’ I don’t know if they were allowed back.”

On another instance he watched Baltes let an unsuspecting bystander know he was out of line: “When you’d roll them cars up top into tech, they had ropes around the area, and there was just this guy standing on the inside part of the rope. He’s a fan, just standing there and watching. That Earl walks up and says, ‘You with this car right here?’ The guy says, ‘No, I’m just watching.’ Then Earl says, ‘Well, what do you think that rope’s for?’ The guy says, ‘I don’t know.’ Then that Earl proceeded to scold him. Oh, my Lord … ‘You see that rope? You know you’re not supposed to be over here!’ He just went off on this guy. This poor guy was just standing there. I remember seeing that and thinking, Man, I don’t want that guy to yell at me. Holy crap!”

On how Eldora’s racing has evolved: “I’d never seen anybody run any good, ever, in the bottom of the racetrack for the first 20 years I went to Eldora. Like, you just couldn’t do that. The guys who could run right up next to that wall were the guys that always ran good there. It wasn’t until the early 2000s, maybe, that they made the racetrack where you could get low and run good down by the inside wall. You would never even consider doing that before. You couldn’t go anywhere down there. But they didn’t want you to either, apparently, because they never made the racetrack to where you could move down the racetrack.”

On the vagaries of fate that come with chasing glory in Eldora’s major events: “At Eldora, there’s a lot of luck involved. There’s literally probably 50 guys that are gonna show up (this) week (for the double Dreams) that can win that race. Nobody’s gonna show up with a bad car and win that race. You’ve got to have a good car, and you’ve got to have some luck. There’s always luck involved. Perfect example — the year (2017) that we run second in the World (with Satterlee), the first preliminary night we were horrible; we made some changes in the heat, not good, and we start in the back of the B-main and go the other way with changes and the car was way better and we get all the way up to fifth. We still weren’t gonna get in the race (25-lap prelim), but Francis blows up the last lap and we get in the race. We change a couple more things like we did for the B-main and started 24th and run up to 14th, 15th, and maybe could’ve run better than that but we just got in some circumstances. But if Francis don’t blow up, we don’t get in the race, we don’t get to make them changes in race condition to have an idea. The next night we come back and run third (in a prelim feature), which puts us in the second row of a heat (for Saturday’s finale) and we start on the front row and we go on to finish second. So if Francis doesn’t blow up (two days earlier), who knows what happens? You gotta get a break here and there at that place.”

On a driver learning how to win at Eldora: “Here’s the thing too — until you go to a place and run well, I don’t think as a driver that you can fully understand what you have to do. You can go there for 20 years, but if you run in the back for 20 years, you can’t learn what it takes to run good because you’ve never run good. You have to be in the front of them races and be competitive, and racing with the better drivers that know what they’re doing there and see how they do stuff. When you’re running 20th in a preliminary race, you’re driving around the place but you’re not learning how to win. I mean, how many times do you (looking at Satterlee) get out of the car at that place and you think, I have no idea what I’m doing out there?”

On the World 100 globe trophy that got away: “That one with (Larry) Moore (in 1992 when the Ohio star drove Allen’s father’s machine to a runner-up finish), we had a really good car. We were like third- or fourth-quick overall, started sixth and won our heat race by a straightaway, got the lead and drove off. We led like 65 laps of it (actually laps 1-35) and Moran beat us. That was one of them races you could run open front tires (with UMP tires mandated for the rear), and we had like a 15 and a 35 on the front and a 20 and 30 on the back … Moran ended up having a 35 and a 55 on the front and like a 20 and a 40 on the back, and he just out-tired us. I think we had the best car but we just put on too soft of tires. That was the race we could have easily won.”

On his mindset after finishing second with Moore in 1992 in his second World 100 attempt as a crew chief: “When we went there and ran second, I was so young I didn’t understand how good Larry Moore was. You think, This doesn’t seem that hard. I don’t know what the big deal is. We’ll come back here next year and put the right tires on and win. It doesn’t quite work out that way.”

On winning the Dream in 1999 with Eckert: “(Steve) Francis was leading, and we had run him down and we were dogging him pretty hard. But you couldn’t pull off the top, and he did something … he claimed he was having a flat tire, but I think he was just falling out of the seat and we passed him and then two laps later he got a flat tire. Then there was nobody close to us after that.”

On another World 100 eluding him in September 1999 when Eckert finished fourth: “The same year we won the Dream with Eckert, we went back for the World and we were good enough to win that race. We were coming up through there, and we got up to about fifth … I can’t remember who it was — Bob Pierce maybe? — and they run us all over the racetrack for 20 laps and we couldn’t get by him even though we were so much better. Like, it killed our tires … when we finally did get by him, that’s all the farther we ever got. It’s like, ‘Man, if we could’ve got by that guy, our car was good enough.’”

On some drama surrounding the chassis Eckert used in both 1999 crown jewels at Eldora: “That car was good there … it was a MasterSbilt car. We built that car and we took it to West Plains (Missouri for the Show-Me 100 a few week before the Dream) and it was terrible. The only two top-10 finishes that car ever saw was the Dream and the World 100. Every other place we took that car it was so unbelievably bad that halfway through the year we got Rocket cars. But that car was so good at Eldora, we took it back to the World 100 that year. I was like, ‘Man, we just won a hundred-grand with this MasterSbilt car three months ago, so we should probably take this car back.’ So we did, and I’ll never forget, (Rocket Chassis’s) Mark (Richards) was mad because we were taking it because we’d been running really good in them Rocket cars, and then (MasterSbilt’s) Keith and Tader were half-mad because we had got Rocket cars and I stripped the big MasterSbilt sticker off the door in the pit area before the heat race (at the World 100).”

On winning the Dream for a second time in 2007 with Casebolt: “I’ll tell you what led up to us winning that race … the week before (Eldora) had the Prelude (to the Dream for NASCAR Cup and other national drivers). We had gone to a Lucas Oil (Series) race the weekend before the Dream at Florence (Speedway in Union, Ky.) and we had won it, then we went to Casebolt’s (in Richmond, Ind.) and stayed there because we had to take that (Rocket) car to the Prelude (for Cup driver Kasey Kahne). So we go (to Eldora for the Prelude) and it’s pretty dry, and that Kasey Kahne was pretty good but he got in a crash in the feature and smashed the body up a little bit and he run third or fourth. He come in after the race and he said, ‘That car was really good for a little bit, but when the tires got worn I started getting loose into the corner. A couple laps before I got in that crash I started getting free.’ And we were on (hard) 40s, and the track was hard and slow, and I said, ‘No s---?’ Well then we went back that weekend (for the Dream), changed the body on it and took that same car and the racetrack was dry, and I knew in my mind that if we got in that race we were gonna have to tighten the car up because that Kahne had said how loose he was getting. I did, and we won. If we’d hadn’t gone to the Prelude and run that car, we would’ve never won that race because I wouldn’t have tightened it up because I wouldn’t have known.”

On the reactions his car owners Raye Vest and Dale Beitler had to winning the Dream: “Raye, he’d get happy about winning a heat race. He liked to win anything. You’d play rummy with him and he’d lose and he’d get mad. He liked to win period. Didn’t matter what it was. That Beitler was really excited. I knew he was excited because I seen him full on hug that (Integra Shocks rep) Brian Daugherty like he was his son.”

On the best crown jewel race he’s ever seen at Eldora: “The one Earl (Pearson Jr.) won, the World in 2006. The one (in 2010) with Moyer winning from the tail (23rd starting spot) was good. Scott (Bloomquist) won from going to the tail (the 2014 World 100) and that was pretty impressive. But that 2006 World was just real good. If Josh (Richards) would’ve had any experience at all racing (he was just 18 and in his third year of racing), he would’ve won that race. He had the car to win it and he had the chance, and he just made two or three wrong moves, rookie moves, that he wouldn’t make now. And Jeep (Van Wormer) and (Shannon) Babb were too busy trying to crash over top of each other and into the wall, and Earl was just smart enough to slide by ‘em all while they weren’t looking. It was like, ‘Where’d that guy come from?’ ”

On the best drivers in Eldora’s Dirt Late Model history: “That (Jonathan) Davenport does a pretty good job now. I didn’t get to see (Jeff) Purvis (a World 100 winner three times in four years from 1983-86). Bloomquist … all those wins (eight Dreams, four World 100s) aren’t all of it. Look at how many times he’s run second and third. Top-threes, the guy’s got like 25 or something (actually 27 combined); I think he’s run second in the World 100 like eight times, something unbelievable. I guess you gotta say Billy Moyer — he’s won six of ‘em (World 100s, plus two Dreams), so that’s pretty good. And that Donne Moran (four World 100s, one Dream, the 2001 Eldora Million), he was awful good there. Moran, he was good because he could do back 35 years ago what Bobby Pierce can do now — he can run inches from the outside wall for 100 laps and never mess up. Nobody could do that back then. Now you see more guys that can kind of do that, but Donnie Moran could run that cushion against that wall at Eldora as good as anybody I’ve ever seen.”

Comparing Bloomquist and Moyer at Eldora: “Moyer was kind of impressive because he won all them races different. He won them dragging the wall. He won them in the infield. He won them on hard tires. He won them on soft tires. He won ‘em in Rayburn cars, other cars. Scott, every one of them races Scott won has been almost exactly the same — he gets his car really good, he gets about halfway to three-quarters up on the track, and he kind of moves up and down a little and never gets to the top or the bottom. I guess he can just get his car good enough to where he doesn’t need to do anything else. He’s run all them races by being able to run on the part of the racetrack that them other guys can’t use, which is usually right in the middle of the track where it’s just the most slippery. Like, when Scott wins, it’s generally a boring race, except for that race when he went to the tail (in 2014 because of a penalty he received for having Lexan in his window net); he might have lapped the field if they didn’t put him to the tail. He just gets out there, in one spot, just kind of rolling around, nobody’s catching him, just real smooth. Exciting to watch is not his thing. It never really has been.”

On what Satterlee — a feature starter five times in the World 100 (finishes in order since 2010 of 17th, 25th, 14th, eighth and second) and three times in the Dream (placed 25th, 14th and 16th in consecutive years from 2013-15) — must do to break into the fraternity of Eldora crown jewel winners: “Start with the small things — not crash. But also, Eldora’s one of them places that your car’s gotta be really good, because you can’t overcome it. You can’t go out there with a bad race car and ever think that you’re gonna be competitive. That’s why you see good guys run bad there - the best driver in the world can’t take a bad race car and make up for it at Eldora. It’s impossible. And it’s not one of my better places as a crew chief, I’ll tell you that. I’ve worked on a lot of cars that didn’t go very good there. It’s hard to get a bead on that place.”

On the pressure a crew chief faces at Eldora: “When you’re in contention to win and you have a chance to win, that’s when there’s pressure. When you know you’re no good and you’re starting in the back, you’re like, ‘Whatever happens, happens.’ But when you win your heat and you start up front and you think, ‘We got a shot to win this race, and the changes that I make now are going to help determine a lot of what happens in the next hour’ … there’s a little bit of pressure to that. But it’s more pressure from myself, not worrying about what other people are gonna say or think. I feel like I’ve done enough in racing that people think I’m not a total dumb ass, but I guess everybody wants to be good at what they do. It’s like I told Gregg when we ran second the other year, we were happy to run second, but you almost feel like, ‘Maybe that’s my last chance I have to win it, and if I’d have done one thing different maybe we would’ve won.’ Hell, the last time I’d run second (before ’17) was in 1992! That’s a long time between second-place finishes, so you never know when you’ll have another chance.”

On the significance he places on the World 100: “Even the Dream, it’s just not the same as the World 100. The Dream is a big deal because it pays so much money … but both of them Dreams that I won, I’d trade both of them for one World 100. The money’s really nice (in the Dream), but there’s no other race that matters more than that (World 100). You can go and ask any driver that’s won that race, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: ‘That one race changed my whole career.’ Just the way people view you, the product people and they way they just throw stuff at you after you win the World. It’s just a bigger deal. Maybe it’s just because it’s been around for so long, but the World 100 itself just means something. The World 100 isn’t about the money, so that’s the difference. Most of these races, it’s really just about what they pay.”

On his most memorable moment(s) at Eldora: “Standing on that stage after winning one of them big races, that’s by far the neatest thing I’ve ever done in racing. It’s all about what it takes to get to that point. In my opinion, on them preliminary nights and stuff like that, they shouldn’t take them guys (who win) to the stage. Same thing with those scramble winners — if you don’t win the Dream or the World 100, you shouldn’t get to go on that stage. I’ve won national championships and won races that pay 50-grand to win and a hundred-grand, and none of that stuff, it all pales to standing on that stage at Eldora. In my mind, when they pull them cars up there after other races, it almost bothers me, it makes me cringe thinking, ‘You don’t deserve to be up there. Why you up there?’ They should be down there by the flagstand (for pictures) like any other race. It takes the specialness away from it. You should have to win a crown jewel to get up there.”

On the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat at Eldora: “After you win, the other 100 times you go there and you don’t get to stand on that stage, you feel like driving into a bridge abutment on the way home. And I guess that’s what makes it special, too — the difference between being able to stand on that stage at the end of that weekend and not making the race or being bad or getting crashed and driving home mad. It’s like, ‘Man, I’ve wasted three or four days of my life and I am absolutely miserable. But when you win, it’s like, you’re on top of the world.”