![]() Short stories turn into longer ones as the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame racer remembers the thrill and heartbreak of his racing career. Johnson’s best finish was a sixth at Darlington, S.C., in May 1969.Īfter finishing high school, the teenaged Sills moved back to California to start his journey as an open-wheel racer. His mom, Marilyn later married hometown super modified and stock car racer Richard “Dick” Johnson, who would eventually move the family to North Carolina to further pursue a career as an independent NASCAR Grand National driver in the late 1960s. Sills’ father, a Bay Cities Racing Association midget racer, passed away at 30 from cancer when Sills was just three. “These are my toys,” he says with a grin. The retired racer also maintains an array of motocross bikes and karts and works on modifying his fleet from his two-car garage. Sills keeps an open invitation to his closest friends and fellow racers to come by and kick up the dirt. A water truck stands by, ready for track prep. Across the property, since retiring from driving in 2006, the racer has built a private three-quarter-mile, winding motocross track that features a 56-foot jump, a twisting, flat road course for go karts and, like a miniature West Capital Raceway, a dirt oval is carved into the backyard. Sills still has plenty of elbow room as he owns a sizable portion of the land. They moved here in about 1949 or ’48 and I grew up here with four sisters. ![]() “We were rice farmers,” Sills says of his mother and father, Marilyn and Jimmy Sills, Sr. Photos + text: © Saroyan Humphrey | Dust is flying as three-time USAC Silver Crown champ Jimmy Sills, 65, motors his hard-working ATV across the driveway to his northern Sacramento County house and points toward the horizon. Interview | National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and three-time USAC Silver Crown champion remembers thrill and heartbreak from his open-wheel driving career.
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