Griffin Racing - A Family Affair

If you’ve read Turner Motorsport Weekly regularly, you’re likely familiar with the exploits of Turner’s SPECE46 driver, Bill Griffin. In the past few years, Bill’s growth in the amateur racing community has been explosive. From learning the ropes in NASA’s HPDE courses to driving the blue and yellow competitively, he’s created Griffin Racing and brings his SPECE46 330ci to nearly two dozen events every season. However, the other half of Griffin Racing has rarely received mention. Bill’s son, Riley, has been a driving force for the team from the beginning and has recently stepped into a more permanent role as a driver for the team with his newly acquired racing license. This week, we’re excited to share with you Riley’s story and the future of Griffin Racing. 

Before the father and son were used to donning fire suits and pin balling across the continent for races, Bill and Riley were your average car enthusiasts. Sure, cars were exciting and entertaining for them, but it wasn’t until Riley picked up an E36 in high school that they took a casual interest and began to explore it as a dedicated hobby. 

Fixing up the E36 together gave Riley and Bill a comfortable mechanical familiarity with BMWs of that era and simultaneously became the little spark of inspiration that neither of them could shake. With its bias towards performance driving, the E36 did more than just cement a love for the brand in the pair. It enticed them to consider BMWs as literal vehicles for becoming involved in motorsports.

Naturally, Bill dove into this hobby headfirst as you might have read in some of our interviews. However, Riley was still in high school. Bill picked up the E46 330ci that would become the race car we know and love today, but Riley was dedicated to his studies. While Bill was dipping his toes into high performance driving courses, Riley graduated high school and left to pursue an engineering degree.

During that time, Bill picked up his racing education pace to a breakneck speed to prepare himself for competitive driving as quickly as possible. Riley, focused on his education, would join Bill as often as possible. He followed his father’s footsteps, albeit, at a slower pace, but was able to graduate from Purdue with a motorsports engineering degree in that time.

Education in hand, a position within the motorsports world putting his degree to work with suspension systems, and the time to devote to a hobby, Riley was finally able to engage more fully in the hobby that he and his father had bonded over the past few years. It was with that time that he completed his HPDE courses and moved up to actually share the E46 with Bill as a driver halfway through the 2020 season.

Naturally, it took some time to work out an efficient system for the team. With Bill instructing new drivers, racing one or two of the sessions, and Riley racing the others, the car didn’t catch much of a break. Neither did Bill or Riley, who were often nonstop during a weekend event rushing between one session or another and constantly switching drivers. Not only did this make schedules tight, it also reduced the amount of time either of them had to learn the track for the weekend. As a result, Griffin Racing struggled to gain points through that season.

This year, though, with Riley more accustomed to the car and a revised strategy, the team was quite successful. Riley and bill split the entire season up rather than session by session, which allowed one driver to see the full benefits of a weekend learning the track to give them the best possible chance at nabbing a podium finish. The strategy paid off, too. Riley was able to take home his first P1 finish at the competitive level this season and Griffin Racing won podium finishes throughout the season, once again demonstrating the importance of seat time and racing strategy off the track. 

With the 2022 season approaching quickly, Riley is looking forward to some more exciting changes for team Griffin. Until this past season, the primary focus was SPECE46. Now, with Riley a fully-fledged driver and Bill spending time behind the wheel of supercars with Extreme Experience, Griffin Racing is ready for a step up.

Of course, there will still be some SPECE46 races that the pair compete in, but Riley is ready to help push Griffin Racing into even more competitive spheres. Bill has dabbled in the Global Time Attack Challenge before, but 2022 is when they want to push into that world more regularly. GLTC will be a big part of Bill and Riley’s event schedule next year and they aim to split roughly twenty events, including GLTC, between the two of them. 

Now, the goal is to take Griffin Racing as far as it will go. Riley is eager to catch up to his dad and contribute equally to team Griffin. Splitting the driving, the costs, the wrenching, and working towards a shared goal is the post-adulthood version of Bill and Riley working on that old E36 back in high school. It is certainly something they are successful doing, as their win record shows, but more importantly, it’s something the two genuinely enjoy together. 

Sharing that experience and maintaining this tight father-son relationship is incredibly rare, especially when they live several hours apart, but racing is something that brings them together. Through this shared hobby, and the joint goal of becoming as competitive a team as they can be, Bill and Riley demonstrate a unique bond that likely many of us wish we could share with our fathers and sons. 

That isn’t to say they are all smiles and roses all the time, as Riley admits. With competitive drivers comes natural competition, especially when one of those competitors is as big a personality as Bill. Both physically in size and metaphorically in charismatic presence, Bill casts a rather large shadow that Riley is eager to upstage. The competition grows between the two as Riley has moved into his partnering role with the team and aims to make a name for himself alongside rather than attached to Bill’s own reputation. 

This little friendly internal competition is also the result of grassroots motorsport’s small community where everyone knows each other. As he was coming up through racing education and to this day, Riley is often recognized not for being one of the youngest competitors but for being ‘Bill’s son.’ When asked about motivation, this desire for autonomy unquestionably plays a part. Still, the pair are as tight as ever and look forward to seeing the payout from their competitive spirit. 

We’re all extremely excited to see Riley step into his own at the helm of Griffin Racing’s E46 in 2022. The inspiration they provide is second to none as is their willingness to help teach anyone interested. For Bill and Riley, racing is now second nature and the hobby has grown into a full-on obsession. With that experience has come the ability to help and advise others who want to follow the same path, and that’s something both Bill and Riley love to do.

Their relationship, and their willingness to share their experiences, are things we can all learn from. Fortunately, Griffin Racing seems to be here for a long time, especially with Riley picking up more responsibility with the team. So, we can all expect to watch their trajectory with even more interest, cheering Riley on in his friendly father-son competition, and giving all of us some entertainment along the way. From all of us at Turner Motorsport, we can’t wait to see where Griffin Racing goes in 2022.