Screven Motor Speedway
Revival off to good start for Benji Hicks
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Benji Hicks at Screven Motor Speedway. (Kevin Ritchie)
SYLVANIA, Ga. (Feb. 7) — Did Benji Hicks think he had any hope of a top-five finish in Saturday’s 50-lap Winter Freeze XVI finale at Screven Motor Speedway after starting the program by timing last among 28 entrants?
“Absolutely not,” replied after the event while standing inside his trailer.
Yet there Hicks was following the Southern All Star Series-sanctioned feature, relishing an unlikely fifth-place finish. He came all the way back from his disastrous qualifying run and a 20th-place starting spot to send him home to Mount Airy, N.C., riding high.
“Man, I’m telling you. I’m so excited just to be able to come back and compete after qualifying,” Hicks said. “I messed up my first lap and I told myself, I was like, ‘All right, just hit (turns) one and two and fix your mistake in three and four,’ and I go out there and screw up in three and four again those laps. We ended up qualifying dead last, didn’t make it through the heat race, had to run a B-main and rolled off 20th.”
Hicks, 30, climbed as high as fourth in the feature running order at one point, reaching the position on lap 40 largely by using the inside lane that was “really, really good for a lap or two after a restart.” He lost the spot, however, on lap 44 to Payton Freeman of Commerce, Ga., when he was shoved high through turns three and four and had to settle for fifth.
While Hicks acknowledged he drove a bit too conservatively once he grabbed fourth, but he was still perturbed by Freeman’s pass.
“I screwed up by slowing down too much (once in fourth) and it allowed Payton to get to me and rough me up and run me to the wall,” Hicks said. “I know that it was probably nothing intentional because me and Payton's always got along really well, but I mean, you know, I’m a big believer in racing people the way that you get raced, so, I’m not going to say that I’m going to go out there and do anything on purpose, but if the opportunity presents itself, I might return the favor to him one day.”
That was the lone downer from Hicks’s feature outing. Everything else about his performance was positive.
“I’m telling you, my brother-in-law, my mom and my dad is all the crew I got here with me this weekend, and we’ve busted ass and it’s been wild,” Hicks said. “It’s been a journey this weekend, but it’s been fun. I’m tickled to death to get back up and get my head back above water and feel like I accomplished something this weekend with the Super (Late Model) stuff.”
Hicks, who turns 31 next month, views 2026 as a comeback of sorts. After a very busy ’24 campaign in which he made more than 40 starts, including a run on the Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals tour, he reduced his schedule significantly last year, making fewer than a dozen feature starts.
Most of Hicks’s attention in 2025 was focused on his twin businesses — BHR Fabrication and Double Nickel Race Cars — and serving in a different role as crew chief for Kennie Compton Jr. of Bland, Va. With Compton running Double Nickel chassis, Hicks was at his side to assist him throughout the season.
Hicks isn’t overseeing Compton’s racing this season, opening him up to more racing of his own.
“We’re still great friends, he has a great family, we respect the heck out of each other,” Hicks said. “We split ways, but I still help them, just not full-time.”
So Hicks said he’s “going back racing full time this year,” and that means plenty of varied action is on his agenda.
“We’re going to run a Super schedule, a Limited Late Model schedule, a 604 (Crate) schedule and a 602 (Crate) schedule,” said Hicks, who pulled double-duty at Screven with his 604 Crate entry along for CRUSA-sanctioned competition. “We’ve actually got three (Double Nickel) cars. We’ve got a Super car, a Limited car and a Crate car, so the motors don’t have to alternate in the same car itself.”
Hicks, who finished eighth in Friday’s Super Late Model feature and tallied sixth- and fourth-place finishes in 604 Crate headliners, said his next action will come during Feb. 25-28’s North Carolina Speedweek at the reopening Friendship Motor Speedway in Elkin, N.C. Three Late Model divisions will race at the track that’s reopened for 2026 — a development that has Hicks enthused about the state of racing in his backyard.
“A good friend of mine, Chuck Melton, has bought Friendship Speedway this year and opened it back up and I hope everything goes as planned,” Hicks said. “I hope it goes well. I hope it brings local racing back to my area where I grew up.
“And (multi-track owner) Bo Miller's done a great job with (Virginia’s) Ararat (Speedway) and he’s bringing Oak Level (Raceway in Bassett, Va.) back. So we’ve got like five racetracks, including Wytheville (Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Va.) and Princeton (W.Va.), even Beckley (W.Va.), within two hours. We’re getting racetracks back, so it’s good for me because I can race close to home and it’s great for my business because people are going to need parks and repairs and set up stuff and so forth.
“So I’m really looking forward to this year,” added Hicks, who will also house and maintain the Brian Nuttall-owned Double Nickel No. 16 Super Late Model that Ross Bailes of Clover, S.C., will drive in selected events. “I’m really excited about everything we’ve got going on.”
