BARBERVILLE, Fla. (Jan. 20) — Veteran driver Riley Hickman didn’t plan on spending the third weekend in January tackling the fifth annual Sunshine Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park.
Although he’d finished sixth in the Rogers-Dabbs Performance Parts Crate Racin’ USA Winter Shootout Series-sanctioned Ice Bowl on Jan. 6 at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala., Hickman experienced engine trouble and as a result he planned to skip the tour’s second event.
But when CVR Race Cars owner Chip Vineyard gave him a call offering a ride for the weekend, Hickman, of Ooltawah, Tenn.—a community of about 700 residents located 20 miles east of Chattanooga—found himself preparing for a trip to the Sunshine State.
“We went to the Ice Bowl and I said I'd like to maybe go do this Winter (Shootout) deal,” Hickman said following a solid third-place effort in his 20-lap qualifying feature at Volusia on Friday. “Did the Ice Bowl deal and I hurt an engine down there. Then the generator tore up on my hauler down there (at Talladega). It was after we got loaded up, thank goodness. So I wasn’t planning on coming here. (Chip) called me on Monday and was like ‘Hey, what are you doing?’
“I said I'm just staying home working. I'm not planning on going anywhere with it. He was like, ‘I’ve got this stuff if you want to go race,’ and I said okay. So, we put a seat in it, and we’re here. This is a CVR car, and is the CVR house car. Chip is snowed in at home (in Lenoir City, Tenn.) and hadn't been able to get out yet. These (crew) guys left early enough that they missed part of the snow and were able to get out and not get stuck.”
Hickman, a four-time Southern All-Star Dirt Late Model Series champion who had never seen Volusia’s sprawling half-mile, D-shaped track before Thursday, made the most of the last-minute decision to head towards the Daytona Beach region. Thanks to the third-place finish in his qualifying feature, by Saturday he’d climbed to third in points on the Adam Stewart-directed miniseries.
Unfortunately for Hickman and the CVR team, mechanical gremlins prevented him from lining up in Saturday’s B-main, ending his night early.
“We had a parts failure in the (right-front) shock department. So in an effort for us not to make ourselves look more embarrassing, we elected to load up for the evening,” said Hickman.
Nevertheless, it was a nice return for the 45-year-old driver who spent the last few seasons promoting Boyd’s Speedway in Ringgold, Ga., while in semi-retirement. During that stretch, Hickman also took the time to recuperate from injuries he received during a race at 411 Motor Speedway in Seymour, Tenn. Hickman, one of seven drivers across multiple divisions who flipped his car that day, suffered a broken wrist and a concussion.
“I’ll be honest with you, and I've told some people this and told some others, when I turned the car over at 411, it affected me more mentally than I thought it would,” admitted Hickman. “Honestly, there was a good eight months there that I didn't want to be in a race car. I just did not want to be around it. Not so much, it didn't scare me. It was just…I’ve got to work on Monday morning. We've got a business to run. I've got a family to take care of, and that weighed on me a little bit. For a good eight months, I just didn't want to race. I didn't want to be in a car. Just no desire at all. I didn't care. Doing the racetrack deal kept me in the loop.”
How long his self-imposed break continues is still undecided. Hickman, who also runs his family-owned Hickman Manufacturing, a Cleveland, Tenn., company which machines parts for the automotive and textile industry, had very little time to race while operating Boyd’s. Now that he’s no longer involved with the historic speedway, which was sold by owner Emerson Russell to Brown Brothers Construction last April, Hickman said he has a little more time.
“We're going to race a little bit, as much as I can anyway,” said Hickman. “The racetrack deal, while I was doing that deal, I wasn't able to go racing. I wasn't in the right mindset, honestly, to be able to go do that. My kids got old enough during that time to where they wanted to race a little bit. So, this past year I kind of focused on just doing some stuff with them and I raced my own car there a few times at the end of the season. Had a good time and then this deal came about.”
Despite sitting out awhile, Hickman has still managed to do a good job keeping up with ever-changing chassis technology. Operating Boyd’s Speedway actually helped him in that respect. When teams leased the facility to test, Hickman silently paid attention.
“It’s kept me in the loop whenever these guys would come over,” he said. “We did a lot of track rentals at Boyd’s, and I would see these guys. You'd have these guys from Longhorn come down. You'd have big name drivers and they would come and test. I don't say a whole lot, but I just kind of watch and take it all in, as long as you're not one of those guys that are tell-all’s. You can find out a lot more if you just stand around and listen and don't run your mouth. I'm quiet when it comes to a lot of that stuff, and I've seen a lot of stuff and it's all relative.”
Following the disappointing ending on Saturday, Hickman said the team doesn’t plan to follow the series to East Bay Raceway Park for the tour’s third stop. That doesn’t change his outlook on the rest of the season though.
“I would like to do a little Super (Late Model) racing if my schedule allows it,” sai Hickman. “I’d like to do some of the Crate Late Model shows, and possibly do some Super racing. When I slowed down a few years ago, I kinda sold all of our Super stuff that we had and got rid of all of it. So, my motor…I’ve got to do something about the engine program and stuff for the Super deal. I don’t know, we’ll just kind of play it by ear and go from there, and we’ll figure it out one way or the other.”