By Patrick Stephan
Mike Griffin at IMS in 2001. Photo IMS Archives
First, I’m not good at writing these tributes, so I generally leave this to others, but sometimes, you just want to get something on paper, even when you know the words can’t possibly do the person justice.
This is one of those cases, as we were saddened to learn yesterday of the recent passing of Mike Griffin. Our most sincere condolences go out to his wife Jacque, the Griffin family, and to his many friends around the country and around the world.
Among the original owners at Panther Racing, Griff was easily one of my favorite people in the paddock from the moment I got started in this business back in 1999. Honest, open, kind, friendly, I could go on and on, but Griff was simply one of those people you just looked forward to seeing at the race track. He took the time to have actual conversations, and you always walked away in a better mood.
Now of course, I wrote stuff he didn’t like on occasion, and we had some tough conversations, but he was genuinely fair…and I will say quite persuasive that his (or the team’s) viewpoint was the correct one.
All in, Griff was very helpful to TSO back in those early days of internet based reporting, and even more helpful when I started working pit lane for INDYCAR Radio in the early 2000’s.
A particular incident exemplified Griff’s personality when Tomas Scheckter’s car was forced in to some Panther Racing crew members on pit lane at Michigan. While Griff was pissed at the situation, and concerned for his crew member friends, he was amazingly calm as he gave me names, injury updates, and other info for the listening audience.
That was a tremendous help to someone like myself who had no actual broadcasting experience before becoming a pit reporter.
Griff on the other hand was a radio pioneer. I’m not from Indy, so I never got to hear him in his early days as a disc jockey and radio personality, but he was among the founders of what was clearly a very cool station called WNAP back in July of 1968. Just digging through Facebook and searching the internet – people clearly loved Griff, the station, and a format he helped create.
And for his friends in racing and radio, you should listen to this audio Scott Wheeler posted on YouTube. This is Griff signing off from WNAP to go start another station in Cleveland. I challenge anyone to get that voice out of their head…not possible.
That voice, and the words he so articulately chose, from 1970 (I think) sounded the same when working with him in the 2000s, and holy crap was he a cool cat!
I actually had most of the above written and then happened to run in to former Panther Racing driver JR Hildebrand, who is here working as a consultant at Arrow McLaren Racing with Nolan Siegel. Our brief conversation turned to Griff, and JR simply said, “What a good dude! Man! What a good F*&#ing dude!”
Couldn’t agree with JR more, and if I’m being frank, that could have been this entire story. Just a picture of Griff, that smile, and the above…and everyone that knew him would say, yep, that was Griff! And I barely scratched the surface of the multitudes of Griff’s contributions to the world. Only knowing his racing exploits, I can’t even speak to all the cool stuff he did in the music industry.
I, not alone in thinking highly of Griff, so I also reached out to another former Panther Racing co-owner, now IMS and NTT INDYCAR Series president, Doug Boles who said of Mike Griffin, “Mike was one of my favorite parts of my Panther Racing days and our bond of friendship was continuous, long past my time at Panther. His positive attitude, devotion to serving others, and loyalty to his family and friends was a remarkable example of how we all should strive to act.”
“I cherished his late night emails (he lived on west coast time recently) that would greet me in the morning, and the phone chats about our time at Panther and his ideas on growing the sport of INDYCAR we both loved so much. True friends are hard to find in life, and I am blessed that Mike and I found each other and I’m thankful for the friendship. I, along with others, will miss him.”
Another mutual friend, Mike Kitchel, was the director of communications for Panther, and later for the INDYCAR. Now the co-owner of Catalyst317, Kitchel wrote about Mike Griffin,
“There’s just nobody like Griff, man … passionate, kind, loyal, funny, feisty and competitive. He absolutely revered IndyCar racing and the Indianapolis 500 and that love was infectious to everyone in his orbit. He had time for everybody and told his stories as passionately as he listened to yours. He legitimately taught me everything I know … as a mentor, a friend, a teammate … truly one of the most important people in my life. Not a single day goes by that I don’t do multiple things that I learned from Griff. He was just always the coolest dude in the room … and his spirit remains alive and well through his beautiful wife Jacque, his kids, and all of us that had the privilege to be part of his universe.“
