Consistency is key for Allen to crack the Euro top five…

Cookstown’s Philip Allen is hoping an added level of consistency and focus can help him break into the top five of the European Rally Championship in 2025.

Behind the wheel of a new Rally2 Skoda Fabia, prepared by a new team in highly regarded Latvian outfit, Sports Racing Technologies (SRT) and with an experienced co-driver in Craig Drew alongside him, the 33-year-old believes he has the right package in place to help him achieve his goals this year.

Allen has always shown pace behind the wheel, but he admits he hasn’t been able to deliver it for long enough and consistently enough, particularly at European Championship level. He is is still a relative rookie having only competed in a handful of events over recent stages, on the back to a surprising lack of experience competing in Ireland too, having only taken up the sport less than a decade ago.

2024 was his first real experience of competing on the continent and he feels that, bar a couple of mistakes, he fared well against some of the top drivers in the world but he admits, competing against full-time professional drivers when you have a business to run back home and it’s your money you’re investing in your ‘hobby’ makes the task even tougher.

“ Last year was about getting at least a half knowledge of what’s going on,” he explained. “ But this year, I intend to be putting in maximum effort because the amount of work it takes, it’s enjoyable to a point but it’s more like a job.

“ The fun aspect is completely out of it. People looking in think, it’s just get in the car and get on the plane and it’s a holiday, it’s great craic, but it’s not the case at all.

“ But see when you’re at it – at the end of last year I was seconds per kilometre closer to the top end, which is what you’re chasing all the time. We were getting fastest splits last year, a good few top five times and over the last four or five tarmac rallies – that last rally in Spain we had the best pace we had probably ever.

“ People don’t understand the pace – it sounds bad if you’re 12th or 10th but that’s against some of the best drivers in the world, you’re not racing against boys who are mixing cement on a Monday morning or driving a lorry! The top 15 in the ERC aren’t working, I’m probably the only one in the top 20 working.

“ We had good pace and I suppose the pace is getting closer [to the top guys] but if the pace wasn’t closer you’d think about doing something different!”

After gaining experience on the ERC in 2024, Allen is hoping to close the gap between himself and the front-runners, including another local driver, Kesh native Jon Armstrong, who will again compete for the M-Sport team.

And he feels that if his experience in Spain last year is anything to go by, he should start strongly at the season opener this coming weekend, new event Rally Sierra Morena.

“ Spain’s obviously a new round which I think should be one of our stronger rounds,” he acknowledged.

“ That ERC first round will be interesting too because Robert Virves and a few boys out of WRC are going as well. Overall, it’s about trying to get some consistency and don’t get me wrong, Jon Armstrong is a good benchmark for us, but don’t get me wrong, this year I’d like to get into the top five.

“And I think if I can get a bit more consistency I can get to the top end of that other group if you know what I mean. What I had been doing was, I could be third or fourth fastest and then drop down to 12th. If I can consistently maintain a pace – for example if you’re sixth the whole rally you’re liable to finish third, but it’s about getting to that level.

“ I don’t have the experience of some of the others, there’s lads who have been doing the European Championship for three or four years and who are looking to win the title, whereas, to be fair, I haven’t done a whole lot of rallying in comparison.

“ I didn’t start rallying until I was 28/29 and I haven’t done a lot of rallying because you need work commitments to be right before you’re heading off anywhere and this is the first time in probably the last year and a half that the business has the right structure to allow me to be taking considerable time off.

“ But we’ll see what the pace is like at round one and the pace in Spain I had [last year] was the best I had all year, so it will be interesting to see what way we’re fixed against the boys this year.

“ I feel Spain should be one of our strongest rallies and we’ll find out in a couple of weeks!”

In order to achieve his goal of breaking into the rarefied air of the top five or even the top 10 on a more regular basis, Allen knows that he needs to be more focused behind the wheel and he believes his new co-driver, Craig Drew, who sat with him three times in 2024, could hold a vital key in accessing that particular skill.

“ Craig has been a great asset because sometimes I’d have been lacking a wee bit on focus and effort,” Philip acknowledged. “Trying to run a business and rally is not easy and it’s not as if you’ve a pile of sponsors and you’ve nothing else to be doing.

“ I’m home for three days and then I’m away, so you’re trying to jam six days work into three when you are home, so the whole mindset has been a bit better this year

“ And Craig’s very good, he has good experience. He has sat with Solberg, Robert Virves, Chris Ingram.

“He did a good bit with Oliver Solberg, a good bit with Virves, so Craig was a real good addition to the whole thing.

“ Craig’s used to be in a high intensity setting with a driver and when you’re used to being with the likes of Oliver Solbert, Robert Virves, those boys who are putting in 110 per cent effort, he’s used to that 110 per cent and he automatically is onto me saying ‘we need to do this, we need to do that, Philip have you done this, have you done that’. It comes second nature to him so it becomes second nature to work harder without even realising it because he’s chipping away at you all the time.

“ Craig has come on and the pace has come up, he was there in Wales when some of the splits were very, very good, with fastest splits and second fastest stage times.

“There’s been good stuff and that was my first rally with Craig and then we did Spain when we were bang on the pace straight away.

“He’s brought the pace on. We do more DVD work, more than I’d ever have done before, so it’s been good that way.”

As well as competing in the European Rally Championship Philip, whose late father Glenn won the NI Rally Championship in 2007, will compete alongside the top World Rally Championship competitors late next month at Rally Islas Canarias, which he will use as another gauge of his progress against the top drivers in the sport.

First though, it’s all systems go for Rally Sierra Morena, which gets underway on Thursday and finishes on Sunday.