FEATURE : GUARDS TROPHY
Philip racing at Silverstone in May
Charles at Donington in June
The B8 rivals
Stalwart supporters of the Guards Trophy , Phillip Nelson and Charles Allison are lifetime friends and business partners yet fierce rivals on the track in their Chevron B8s . Paul Lawrence chatted with them .
No Guards Trophy race would be complete without the pair of Chevron B8s of Nelson and Allison . They have been best friends since they were 17 and business partners for the better part of 40 years , yet once the lights go out at the start of a race , their first objective is to beat each other . Phillip ( 66 ) lives in Ramsbury in Wiltshire and has been racing for just over 30 years . “ I started in Marcoses in 1989 with the late Roger Ealand who got me into it . He took me down to see David Methley , who was his preparer at the time .
“ I was very keen on racing and Roger was at a company that did management training for our company . And he said : ‘ right , let ’ s go and talk about other things outside work . What do you want to do ?’ And I said : ‘ well , I ’ ve always
Phillip Nelson wanted to go racing .’ And of course , I was talking to the right man about racing . That ’ s how I started .”
Within a day of meeting Methley , and still slightly incredulous , Phillip was the proud owner of a black and white Lotus Elan and was set to start racing in the HSCC Novice Championship .
“ So we had a year with the Elan in the novice championship which was a fantastic series . I think we had between 22 and 28 cars out for most races , all novices and there was great camaraderie among the competitors . At the end of that year Roger and David managed to sort of inveigle me into buying a road-going Marcos GT , and during that winter it was built into a race and I had a fantastic time with it . And it ’ s coming out again , hopefully later this season , because I still own it .
“ It sat in the garage for five or six years , because I had some difficulty racing both cars because effectively they ’ re in the same race . I used to find jumping from one car to another quite difficult . But I ’ m definitely bringing the Marcos back out . We had a little go at Cadwell Park with it , but had a small oil leak .”
Phillip has owned his B8 for the better part of 15 years . Once again , Methley sourced the car and they went over to Le Mans and bought it from Steve Hitchens . “ I ’ d been racing with Charlie in his car , which we ’ d been sharing . And that was fantastic . I ’ d raced with Charlie for four or five years in his car and thought it would
“ The main result in any
race is : did I beat him ?” be rather fun to take him on with a B8 of my own .” The partnership between Nelson and Allison goes back to 1974 when they were both gap-year students in Australia . They later ended up together at university in
Reading studying property .
Nelson adds : “ Since 1882 we ’ ve been in business together and close friends and competitive rivals . The main result in any race is : did I beat him ?”
“ I love the B8 but it has had a few problems over the last three or four years which has been very frustrating because it started to lap three or four
Charles Allison
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