Going Racing

Mike Head in the seventies with his Corvair at West Atlanta Raceway. At the time, Mike was renting past of Henderson's Transmission Shop for his racing headquarters.

“I had a couple of uncles and my older brother Donald who used to race some,” Mike told us.  “I used to hang around those old race shops just hoping to go to the races. I would help anyway I could so they wouldn’t leave me on Saturday nights. I had been going to races for years but when I was about 13 or 14, I told them ‘What about me driving that car?’ After they quit hitting me upside my head and chasing me around, they wanted to know who I thought I was. I told them ‘I’m nobody but I can do as good as ya’ll can – I can wreck those cars every Saturday night too.’

“In 1968 I got a 1964 Fairlane that we ran in the hobby class. Around then we raced at a track called Holiday Downs in Fairburn. It was an old horse track and they were letting us race cars.  I met Roscoe Smith there for the first time. We were racing and hooked bumpers and spun out. He told me later he was pretty mad and got out of his car to pay me a visit. Then he said, ‘you kept getting out of your car. You got out, then you got out, and then you got out. I thought is that guy’s body ever going to end! You were a huge fellow, so I decided it wasn’t that big of a deal about the wreck.’ But Roscoe is a great guy. He deserves to be in the hall of fame and a great friend.

“Later we got a Chevrolet – if the good Lord made anything better than a Chevrolet, he took it with him. We pulled it down to Senoia with a chain. If you had a trailer, you were somebody. It wasn’t but just a week or two and I had won a race. And then I went back to my brother and my uncles to remind them what I had said but they just hit me upside of my head and reminded me who I was and where I had come from. That was in the spring of 1969. I pretty much call Senoia my home track even though it is paved now. Hence helped me out more than once with getting the equipment I needed to race.

“My first job was with the Warren Refrigeration Company there in the old neighborhood. Later I worked for the Ross-Neely Freight lines for years. Then in the late seventies I became a full time racer, and have been ever since.”