Hickman was born in 1987 and grew up with motorcycle racing embedded in his family. His father Dave was a Manx Grand Prix winner who also entered two TTs, providing a direct connection to road racing from an early age. Hickman developed through short-circuit competition before making his Isle of Man TT debut in 2014, a move that would define his career.
Hickman has been a consistent presence in the British Superbike Championship throughout his career. He took his first BSB race win at Cadwell Park in 2014, the same year he debuted at the Isle of Man TT. After starting that season without a ride, he raced for Tsingtao WK Kawasaki for a single round before joining the RAF Reserves Honda team for the remainder of the year at Knockhill.
His best championship result came in 2017, when he finished fourth overall. Hickman subsequently competed across a range of seasons, finishing sixth in 2019, fifth in 2021, and ninth in 2022. He raced for Smiths Racing until that team closed at the end of 2020, after which he joined the newly formed FHO Racing aboard BMW machinery. From 2021 onward he raced a BMW M1000RR with FHO, sharing the team initially with Xavi Forés and later with Josh Brookes in 2023.
In 2022, Hickman was given an opportunity to prove himself at World Superbike level, first as a wildcard at the Donington Park round riding his British Superbike BMW, and later as a replacement for Michael van der Mark at the factory BMW team for the Autodrom Most round, where he scored points with a 14th-place finish in race two.
Hickman's record at the Isle of Man TT is exceptional by any measure. In his debut year of 2014 he set the fastest-ever speed recorded by a newcomer to the event, posting a fastest average lap speed of 129.104 mph. He prepared meticulously for his TT debut by completing 70 laps of the near-38-mile course in a hire car and studying race videos.
His first TT victory came in 2018 in the Superstock race, won from Michael Dunlop and Dean Harrison after breaking Ian Hutchinson's lap record twice during the race. On the same weekend he won the Senior TT, raising the absolute lap record to 135.452 mph on the final lap with Dean Harrison second and Conor Cummins third. Two wins in his second competitive TT year announced him as a major force on the Mountain Course.
Hickman won three races in 2019, then four more in both 2022 and 2023 following the two-year pause caused by COVID-19 travel restrictions. Four wins in a single week of TT racing had previously been achieved only by Phillip McCallen, Michael Dunlop, and Ian Hutchinson, who scored five in 2010. Hickman added one further victory in 2024, bringing his career total to 14 wins, placing him sixth on the all-time TT winners list.
In 2023, during Superstock TT race two, Hickman set the all-time lap record at the Mountain Course with an average of 136.358 mph over the 37.73-mile circuit, a benchmark that remained the outright record as of 2026.
Beyond the Isle of Man, Hickman has been a formidable competitor at other international road races. At the Ulster Grand Prix in 2015 he achieved his first international road race win outside the Isle of Man, taking victory in the feature race ahead of Conor Cummins.
The Macau Grand Prix became another arena where Hickman excelled. He won the Macau event in 2015 aboard a Briggs Equipment/RAF Reserves BMW S1000RR. He retained the title in 2016, working his way through from fourth position and winning by just 0.533 seconds from eight-time winner Michael Rutter. A third Macau victory came in 2018, with Hickman again riding a BMW S1000RR prepared by Smiths Racing. The 2019 edition was controversial: Hickman was leading when both red flags were deployed due to accidents, but insufficient laps had been completed to declare a full result, and Michael Rutter was awarded victory as the leader at the last completed lap. Hickman returned to Macau in 2023 with FHO BMW and took a comfortable fourth win, finishing 28 seconds clear of Davey Todd.
Hickman represents a rare profile in modern motorcycle racing — a rider who competes at the highest level of British domestic superbike racing while simultaneously excelling at the most demanding road circuits in the world. His all-time TT lap record and his tally of 14 TT wins place him among the elite of road racing history, while his ability to adapt his BMW machinery to the demands of Macau and the Ulster Grand Prix underlines the breadth of his skills.