Riley Hickman
Over the past several years Riley Hickman and Jason Welshan have been among the top racers in east Tennessee and throughout the southeast. And now the two have joined together to form a new alliance as car builder and driver. And just a few races into the deal, the potential for success is already showing itself.
Welshan’s achievements as a driver are impressive. The Maryville, Tenn. native won 34 features in 2014 and has had multiple other seasons in which he has compiled victories numbering the twenties. But this year “The Flying Welshan” has moved more toward the car builder side of the sport as he and his crew have worked to develop the Savage Chassis. And after taking checkered flags in the new ride himself, he has placed Hickman in the driver’s seat.
The deal putting the two veteran racers together had been a long time in the making as the initial conversation had taken place last December at the Performance Racing Industry trade show in Indianapolis. But when Welshan was finally ready to bring Hickman on board, the final contact was actually made by text message this summer when the Cleveland, Tenn. driver was on vacation.
“Honestly, we talked about it at PRI last year,” Hickman explained in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “He mentioned something to me about it when we were talking and I just kept it in the back of my mind. It just kind of worked out, he and I have always kept in touch and so when I needed to make some changes in my racing program, my life, and everything else the time was right. I needed to slow down a little bit from what I was doing and spend some time with my kids just being a dad for a little bit. I just got to the point that I wasn’t having any fun and I needed to do something different.”
Hickman has been very encouraged so far with the performance of his new team in the new chassis. After only four races the No. R1 has shown the ability to run up front.
“Our first night out at Dixie we had some issues but was running top-5 at a place I’m not real great at,” the 40-year-old wheel man pointed out. “Then we went to Rome the next night and qualified second and was leading that deal until we had a blowout. We went to Kentucky last night(Friday) and ran seventh at Lake Cumberland. That’s a place he had been good at before but I had never seen the place.”
Hickman then recorded another seventh place result this past Saturday night in a $10,000-to-win Southern Nationals Bonus Series race at North Georgia Speedway. This weekend the team looks forward to a trip to East Alabama Motor Speedway for the Alabama State Championship races.
Riley Hickman at the wheel of the Jason Welshan prepared Savage Chassis
Hickman believes his experience in having driven multiple chassis types will help the Welshan crew develop the Savage machine at a faster rate.
“It’s cool,” Hickman declared. “We’re going to Phenix City next week. This deal here gives him a different perspective of being a car owner and they’re wanting to work on this new Savage Chassis. They’re putting in a lot of effort so I’m kind of just the test dummy. I can give them a little feedback here and there because I’ve raced a bunch of different cars over the years. It’s a good deal. They keep this car up and I just kind of show up and drive. It’s keeps a lot off me and lets me go and hang out with my family.”
The former Southern All Star Dirt Racing Series champion went on to add that the team has been doing work other than that on race weekends as well.
Jason Welshan
“It’s a nice piece and we’ve done a lot of testing,” he said. “Every time we go on the race track there’s nothing the same. Sometimes we just throw something else at it just to see if we can come up with something and build a bigger notebook.”
Having the ability to only worry about driving has taken quite a load off of Hickman, who owns and operates Hickman Manufacturing Company in Cleveland, Tenn.
“Not having to worry about anything is big,” the winner of more than 80 feature races explained. “Those guys take care of everything. I don’t have to worry about the truck and trailer, getting there, getting home. Having to work a lot, I’ve probably slacked a little in the work area over the last few years where I needed to put forth more effort into our business, but I had let some of the racing overcome that. Now I’m working 100% on that and doing whatever my kids want to do, go hunt, go shoot, go fish. It’s a lot more fun right this minute.”
And most importantly, Hickman is also having fun again as a race car driver.
“We’re just kind of racing. I’m having a good time and they’re having a good time. We’ll just race as much as we can right now. If I can go, we’ll go racing and if I can’t we’ll take off a week and regroup.”
