At the age of 6, Terry Taylor could barely see over the windshield of his junior dragster.
“I had to sit on a Hulk Hogan wrestling dummy,” Taylor said, “but we made it work.”
It wasn’t long before Taylor moved to go-karts, where he racked up more than 40 wins. It has been nearly seven years since Taylor was crushing the kart circuit around the country, and by all accounts, he was more than ready for a step up to dirt stock cars.
But the death of his grandfather, Leon, who was his primary sponsor in racing, forced him to sell his car when he was 14. Terry was done with racing, but he wasn’t out of the game for long.
“That was tough, but a few years ago, when I got a good job, I told my pops (Terry Taylor Sr.) I’m gonna try to race again,” Terry said.
Terry’s opportunity would be fulfilled by a familiar face, one with deep family roots in racing in the Golden Triangle. Rick Leverette lived on the same street as the Taylors when Terry was young. Children from both families played together until the Taylors moved, so when Terry saw Rick at a track roughly three years ago, he seized his chance to be involved.
“I started going to the track right before I got a car,” Terry said. “I saw him out there and said, ‘That’s Rick.’ I walked up and said, ‘You remember me?’ He said, ‘Heck yeah.’ ”
That chance encounter has blossomed into an unofficial race team. Terry races one of Leverette’s Street Stocks — the red and black No. 16 — and Leverette has moved from Street Stocks to Crate Late Models.
Terry, 21, won his first feature race — at Thunder Hill in Tennessee — roughly two months ago. He will look to add his second win Saturday at the 13th Annual Cliburn Tank Lines Governor’s Cup at Magnolia Motor Speedway.
“I’d bought a car prior to this one, and it did OK,” Terry said. “Rick told me one day he had a car sitting around back if I wanted to run it. We built it from the ground up last year. Got multiple top fives in it. This year, we took my car to High Roller Race cars and got a good setup. Been doing pretty decent in it.”
Leverette said he knew Terry was serious the day they reconnected at the track. Terry was eager to learn everything he could and soon became a part of Leverette’s crew. The eagerness to learn and play whatever roles the team needed impressed Leverette, and it reminded him of his path in racing. Leverette grew up working on race crews with brother, Ted, a long-time Busch and Winston Cup engine builder who built motors for drivers like Mark Stokes and Glenn Baldwin back in the 1980s.
“I’ve been blessed to have a bunch of good people in my life,” Leverette said, “so it gives me chill bumps to be able to help someone and watch them succeed. Terry’s a really good kid — always has been. He just wanted to be involved in racing in any way, and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for it.”
Terry Taylor is third in Street Stocks points at Magnolia and eighth in the Mississippi Street Stocks points. He also is beginning to compete at tracks in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida.
Leverette said the learning curve in Street Stocks is as difficult for newcomers as it is for someone who has been on hiatus. He recalled a friend inquiring about his cars, and when he came to check them out he told Leverette, “Whoa, this is way different than it used to be.”
“The geometry is totally different than it used to be,” Leverette said. “There’s just so much more you can do to them. And the maintenance is just as important; we blew up my car and put it back together every couple of races. Everything has to be maintained, from your ball joints to your bushings. And that’s a lot of work, but Terry is into it all and wants to learn all he can. I had guys like Billy Scarborough I could call for advice, but I’ve gotten by a good bit based on the knowledge I had from working in shops when I was younger.
“It’s great to pass that on to the younger generation.”
As much as Terry has adjusted to a car that is more powerful and heavier than anything he’d ever raced, he said he’s finally learned the nuances of racing in a pack.
“It took me a bit to know how far to drive the car off in the corner, how to lean on somebody to pass them,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun racing with the caliber of drivers in this area each week.”
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