Dillner Channels The Griswolds En Route To SPEED Booth At Loudon

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Dillner Channels The Griswolds En Route To SPEED Booth At Loudon

“I know we look like the Griswolds (of the famed National Lampoon’s Vacation movie series) trekking across the country driving from track to track,” Bob Dillner said...

Megan Englehart | Posted September 19, 2012 Charlotte, NC

Bob Dillner reports for NASCAR Victory Lane, NASCAR Live and SPEED Center, as well as SPEED's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice and qualifying sessions. (Image: SPEED)

DILLNER CHANNELS THE GRISWOLDS EN ROUTE TO SPEED BOOTH AT LOUDON

The play-by-play voice in the SPEED booth alongside Dr. Dick Berggren for Saturday’s live coverage of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (12 p.m. ET) will be a familiar one, particularly to New Englanders.

SPEED reporter Bob Dillner was born and raised on Long Island, N.Y., but spent more of his formative years at Northern race tracks than at home. Dillner practically grew up at short tracks such as Islip Speedway (N.Y.), Waterford Speedway (Conn.), Stafford Motor Speedway (Conn.), Thompson Speedway (Conn.) and Riverhead Raceway (N.Y.), not to mention other venues in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Maine.

But Dillner relocated to North Carolina in 1997 to further his NASCAR broadcasting career on a national level after establishing himself as a motors sports broadcaster and writer in New York. One thing that didn’t change with his geographical location, though, was his effort to incorporate racing and family.

In fact, Dillner took the inclusion of family in his weekly NASCAR on SPEED duties a step further this year when he, his wife, Angie, and their two-year-old son, Lucas, began traveling the NASCAR circuit in a motorhome. His reporting duties for NASCAR RaceDay , NASCAR Victory Lane and NASCAR Live require Dillner to travel every Thursday through Monday, so he wanted an option that would allow his family to be mobile with him.

“We decided to give motorhome life a try this season,” Dillner said. “When I get a break in my on-air schedule or am wrapped up for the day, I go out there to have some semblance of family time, whether it’s changing a diaper or making a sandwich.”

However, the only motorhome driver and caretaker on the payroll is Dillner himself, and while it sounds great, the father of four says learning to drive and maintain a motorhome is an art form of sorts, and not one at which he necessarily excels.

“I know we look like the Griswolds (of the famed National Lampoon’s Vacation movie series) trekking across the country driving from track to track,” Dillner said. “Getting to the next race with the motorhome in one piece is an event itself because it’s so easy to run it off the road. The thing is pretty tall, and a lot of people would be quite unhappy with me if I ripped down power lines and overpasses.”

The transition to life on four wheels has been easier said than done despite the fact Dillner had extensive driving experience of his own that included stints in Legends cars, Street Stocks, Mini-Modifieds, Modifieds, Late Models and everything in between.

“I’ve had to figure out more things with this motorhome than I’ve ever had to figure out on a race car,” he stated. “Working on a car comes naturally, but leveling a motorhome and hooking up the water doesn’t. At Kentucky, a big storm was on its way and someone told me to retract the awnings. I didn’t even know we’d put them out! I’ve had to learn a lot just to get me to my ‘workplace’ at the track each week.”

If there is a bright side to this learning curve for Dillner, it’s that he isn’t afraid to jump in and get his hands dirty, a philosophy he adopted as a child working on race cars with his father.

“I was pulling out of Michigan earlier in the year and noticed the satellite dish was still up and I knew it wouldn’t be by the time I went under the first overpass,” Dillner, the owner of www.speed51.com, a short-track racing website, recalled. “I didn’t have a ladder, so I pulled up to Travis Kvapil’s bus, talked to his driver and explained my dilemma. I climbed his ladder onto the top of his bus, jumped over onto the top of mine and spent the next 30 minutes figuring out how to manually put it down because the electronics had broken.”

For Dillner, the difficult lessons and headaches inherent with taking a motorhome to work each week are just a part of the bigger racing picture.

“We do it as a family,” Dillner said. “My two daughters and older son always have been fully involved in the racing scene, whether they drove, worked on the cars, pushed the Super Late Model to tech or kept track of lap times. I’ve always found family to be the most underlying and cohesive theme in NASCAR and the sport always has hinged on family.”

As he heads to Loudon this weekend, the 42-year-old says he continues to be amazed by the racing fan base in the Northeast, and again points to family as the nucleus.

“There are so many diehard racing fans in the Northeast, which surprises a lot of people, and I think it’s because the fans are so entrenched from the time they are kids,” the Super Late Model car owner elaborated. “A lot of Northeasterners grew up in racing. They grew up at Stafford Speedway, Oxford Plains and other local tracks, and many still work on race cars for a beer instead of a paycheck after the race. When I go to my home track, I see the third generation of families that my family worked alongside and whom I grew up with at the track.”

So, if you see Dillner at a NASCAR track, say “hello” and introduce yourself. But for goodness’ sake, if he’s driving the motorhome, get the heck out of the way.