Joe Gibbs Racing has always had a bit of flair in its crew chief lineup. Tyler Allen is the most recent example of how sturdy the organization’s pipeline of talent is.
By Dustin Albino, Jayski.Com
Some of Allen’s earliest memories in life revolve around racing. He grew up in Washington state, fascinated by his family’s passion for motorsports. He often assisted his dad scaling his race car late at night before focusing on the classroom around middle school.
Allen attended the University of Washington to pursue an engineering degree. That’s when his racing infection returned, as he worked on local late models after getting his schoolwork completed. After one year of helping, he jumped into the deep end and got his own late model.
Not long after, Allen participated in the second Richard Petty Driver Search. Ultimately, he placed fifth with the winner, Ryan Wilson, earning a shot to compete in the ARCA Menards Series event at Rockingham in 2010. Allen figured it was time to find a different career within racing.
“I flew out again and packed two weeks’ worth of clothes and started working for the driving experience and was giving rides and driving around Charlotte for eight hours a day,” Allen recently told Jayski.com. “Got to go to Bristol, Indy and Richmond, a couple of cool places really wanting to drive. I knew I had my engineering degree to fall back on and the driving thing wasn’t going to work.”
Allen volunteered at Venturini Motorsports in ARCA. He remained with the team for more than a year, getting his hands dirty and understanding the knowledge of stock cars. He jumped to the Xfinity Series in 2013 with RAB Racing before betting on himself and submitting his resume for an engineering role on the No. 54 Toyota for JGR, primarily driven by Kyle Busch and crew chiefed by Chris Gayle.
“[Allen] was a guy who had experience and is what I would call a potential diamond in the rough,” Gayle said. “He hadn’t been with a big team, but was doing a good job and all I had heard was great things about him. We always try to look, especially when you’re an Xfinity Series crew chief, you want to cherry pick those guys from those places where you’re like, ‘This guy in the right environment with the right tools could really flourish.’”
Flourish, the No. 54 team did. In his first Xfinity race back since getting injured in the season opener at Daytona, Busch won at Michigan. The No. 54 car won a series-high seven races, with Erik Jones contributing to the win column at Chicagoland. Allen was a major reason for the success.
At the time, Gayle, Chris Gabehart, Mike Wheeler and Eric Phillips were all under JGR’s Xfinity umbrella. Allen was a sponge, listening to everything that came his way from those leaders.
“I had a lot to learn, so I was soaking in everything and anything I could from all of those guys,” Allen added. “The collaboration in the shop was good, which helped me grow as a race engineer and ultimately led to the opportunity to go to the Cup shop.”
Allen spent the 2016 season with Gayle and the No. 18 Xfinity Series team. Busch, the winningest driver in series history, won 10 times. When Allen heard there was an engineer opening on the Cup side ahead of the 2017 season, he sent an email to Adam Stevens within 15 minutes. A couple of days later, Allen’s call-up was official.
“We had an engineer leave to take another role inside the company and we brought Tyler up to work with Ben [Beshore] and I,” Stevens recalled. “It’s a good mesh of personalities. His car knowledge and skill was never in question.
“In this sport at that level with the decisions you have to make, most of the decisions you’re making are based on incomplete information. You never have everything you need to make the right decision and everything is judged after the fact.”
The No. 18 team was the standard. Busch won his first Cup championship just 15 months prior to Allen joining the No. 18 team. Busch won five races in 2017, finishing runner-up to Martin Truex Jr. in the championship battle. The 2018 season was filled with more trophies, as the No. 18 Toyota won a series-high eight times and clinched the regular season title. Busch made it to the Championship 4, but was the last of the four championship-eligible drivers in the finishing order at Homestead despite finishing fourth.
In 2019, Beshore departed the team to be a crew chief in the Xfinity Series. Allen filled the role as lead engineer of the No. 18 team and Busch ultimately scored his second Cup title.
“It started out good,” Allen remembered of the 2019 season. “A little rough through the middle part of the season, but we got the regular season championship and then to win the championship was unbelievable.”
After a disappointing, one-win 2020 season, JGR split up the No. 18 team. Busch was paired with Beshore, earning his first opportunity as a full-time crew chief in the Cup Series. Stevens and his group went with upstart Christopher Bell, who was re-joining JGR after being loaned to Leavine Family Racing for his rookie campaign.
Allen wasn’t surprised by the sudden move to the No. 20 team.
“There were grumblings throughout the year,” he stated. “It was an exciting, fresh start with C-Bell, an incredible race car driver. I think we were all excited for that breath of fresh air and excitement. It was good to come out with the win at the Daytona road course. I think that was reaffirming to us how important the team is.”
In three seasons working together, the No. 20 team won six races and was the only repeat Championship 4 competitor in 2022 and 2023. In seven Cup seasons as an engineer, Allen qualified for the Championship 4 on five occasions.
With the landscape shifting, Allen’s primary goal was to always be a crew chief. Throughout the 2023 season, he pondered the idea of potentially jumping to the Xfinity Series to crew chief one of JGR’s entries. The rotation at JGR is such that a Cup engineer must return to the Xfinity Series to crew chief before getting an opportunity at Cup.
Stevens was the person who encouraged Allen to chase his dream.
“I think that he was at the end of the road as far as he wasn’t going to make any more progress being a race engineer,” Stevens said. “[Allen’s] end goal was to be a crew chief, so he ran it to the end of the road and it was time.”
Allen was paired with the No. 20 Xfinity car for the 2024 campaign, which had a wide cast of drivers. It took just three races for John Hunter Nemechek to claim the first win of the year for the No. 20 team at Las Vegas. Aric Almirola won at Martinsville, with Ryan Truex earning his second straight victory at Dover. Bell added to the team’s success in his lone Xfinity start of the season, executing a last-lap pass to win at New Hampshire.
The No. 20 group is the first team in series history to win its first four races of a season with four different drivers. Nemechek returned to Victory Lane the following weekend at Nashville.
Through 20 races, Allen has called the shots for six different drivers. But for him, it’s all about sticking to his program.
“The seat changes and the driver name changes and that has an effect on some of your setup parameters, but 95% of your checklist of what you need to get right every week stays the same,” he said. “The main focus is to stick with your program and make sure you’re getting the details right and conforming to everything the driver might need throughout the weekend.”
Stevens, who continues serving as a mentor to Allen, believes five victories out of the gate is validating.
“As a company, we’ve done a good job of promoting from within and giving people opportunities to succeed,” he said. “I am as much of an example of that as anybody, and I am super happy to have a little bit of input and influence into Tyler’s progression. There is no question that it’s going to pay dividends on the Cup side one day.”
The biggest hurdle has been managing people and logistics. But the No. 20 team was an established entity, which helped Allen get his feet on the ground. Now, it’s about focusing on the task ahead.
“I knew how to be a good race engineer. I had seen a good crew chief and knew what that looked like, but I didn’t know how to do it,” he said. “A lot of it was management and logistics that I realized how much time this job takes.”
The No. 20 team leads the series with five victories in 2024. With the rotation of drivers, it sits fourth in the owners points standings. The owner’s championship is the end goal for Allen in 2024.
— Jayski —
