A group of supporters surprised front-wheel-drive (FWD) racer Bradley Higgins (right) with a new ride, Simba 2.0, during the Bama Brawl at Fort Payne Motor Speedway in Fyffe, Alabama. TJ McCoy (left), Kenny Stone (second from left), and Randall Banks Jr. (third from left) wanted to help the spirited racer.
“I’ve never seen someone with that much heart,” said McCoy, of Boaz, Alabama. “He told me one day, ‘I look up to you like a hero.’ I told him, ‘To tell you the truth, I look up to you.’ He deserves a good, safe car that’s competitive wherever he takes it.”
In 2019, at age 30, Higgins took his first laps behind the wheel of a FWD race car.
“I was raised in the sport, but I never had the money to do it,” Higgins, a chicken farmer from Sardis City, Alabama, said. “In 2019, I said, ‘Let’s do it now or I ain’t never going to do it.’ I took my life savings and bought me a race car, which was probably the worst [car] I could have ever bought.”
Higgins admittedly learned the hard way and bought another car.
“It was fun, but I couldn’t compete with [the first car],” said Higgins. “I took it as a learning experience. I bought me a Chevrolet Cavalier. It was a faster car, but it wasn’t a winning car.”
The safety of Higgins’ Cavalier concerned McCoy when Higgins brought it to him at A&K Automotive Repair & Fabrication in Albertville, Alabama.
“It had a horrible cage in it — it wasn’t safe,” McCoy said. “He tried to get me to patch the cage in it. I wouldn’t do it.”
Last November, Higgins damaged the Cavalier’s engine at Boyd’s Speedway in Ringgold, Georgia. He dropped it off at McCoy’s shop for repairs.
“Me and Kenny come together,” said McCoy. “I said, ‘Let’s build him a new car. This one was junk and I’m tired of fixing it.’ He said all right. So, we went that route.”
Enter Banks. Banks owns a scrapyard and donated the 1999 Honda Accord with a 3.0L V6. Stone (Banks’ stepson and McCoy’s friend) and McCoy went to work turning it into a race car. They surprised Higgins with the ride during the Bama Brawl in late February.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry, but I thought about it,” Higgins said of his reaction to the car. “I’m not sure what I had done to deserve it, but God saw me as deserving it. I’m very grateful and thankful. I want to make this team proud.”
In his first race with the new car, Higgins placed ninth among a field of 27 entries at the Bama Brawl. Three days later, Higgins’ family received another welcomed addition. His son Gunner was born.
“Sometimes I wonder, ‘God, am I not doing enough? Am I not making you happy?” Higgins said. “I thought maybe I need to change. When I had that car given to me and that new baby, it was like God had shown me, ‘You’re doing the best you can do. Don’t change. Be yourself.’”
By being himself, doing what Bradley Higgins does best, he’s won over the hearts of not only his team, but also many fans as well.
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
