Friends and family remembered Bob Gillig as the kind of drag racer who would help a fellow drag racer even if it meant they might beat him. No one knew that better than his son Tony Gillig, a past NHRA, IHRA, and PDRA Pro Stock racer.
Bob Gillig, 77, passed away on Monday, March 24, 2025, following an apparent heart attack. To understand his father, Gillig shared, was to have been helped or needled by him. Either action was equally efficient.
“He just loved to be able to fix a problem that someone was having and have them get right back,” Gillig said. “It just made him feel good to be able to help people. Even though he was so rough and tough on the exterior, he was a softy, loved to help people, and loved racing. Anything to do with racing; I just wanted to be involved and be a part of it. That, for him, was to help others while in their trailer.
“I used to give them a hard time about it. I go, ‘Quit helping all the other guys. I’ve got to run those guys. They’re going to kick my ass.”
“No, they’re not. You’ll be fine. You’ll whip up on them. You can out-drive them. We’ll be good.” So that was it.”
Gillig was one-half confident and one-half empathetic, which made him the kind of person drag racers and their teams gravitated toward.
“I couldn’t stop my dad from just wanting to be helpful, and just confidently knew that, “‘Well, I’m going to tune our car. We’re going to work on it together. Figure it out and go make a great run, and you’re going to drive great. We’re going to win. Even though I helped that guy, we could still beat him,'” Gillig conveyed. “That’s what he was all about.
“Everyone’s got a story about my dad, and all start with, ‘Your dad was such a ball-buster.”
If Bob busted them, he liked you and saw you as tough enough to take it. The heart condition that would eventually take his life manifested itself in 1999,
“We were headed to the NHRA Gatorrtionals when he had a five-way bypass that year in the spring of ’99,” Gillig recalled. “And ever since then, no issues with his heart at all. Twenty-six years went by, and then, one day, he was driving home from the dentist, pulled into an ER, walked in the front door, and said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.”
Gillig said while the ER staff prepared Bob for treatment, he fell unresponsive, and they were unable to bring him back.
“When he had his first heart attack in ’98, he drove into an ER that day and walked in the door and said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack,” Gillig explained. “They grabbed him, and they saved his life that day because that was a left main blockage, and they saved them. I got to think that that’s what happened again 26 years later.”
Gillig said his work ethic results from what Bob instilled in him by example.
“There were no gimmies,” Gillig said. “The restaurant business, in there working countless hours and washing dishes and doing this and sweeping, mopping, cleaning and doing, and taking care of… There are no freebies or handouts here; get in there and do it. Same with the race car. There are no freebies. There’s no easy run. It’s all about making it happen. You can do it; make it happen. Drive the car.
“He was confident in me. It’s just a lot of post-game pouring through about how they said that my dad was so proud of me. My dad was a man of few words. And as he got older, he spoke more on different levels of me and, how do I put it, he… a little more emotional as he got older, him and I. Actually, we’ve been close since day one. I was attached to my dad’s hip when I was a kid. And through all these years, as he got older, we talked with a little more emotion in his voice, and he knew he was getting older. I was proud of what we did racing-wise, how much fun we had, the memories we made, and all the racing we did. We were just, we were inseparable.”
Gillig was a blue-collar drag racer. He raced an E/Gas Corvette in the late 1970s and early ’80s, hanging out around Union Grove, Wisconsin, where he’d often lock horns with the unforgettable Tony Christian.
“He won class a few times in E/Gas and in Modified, which would qualify you for the race. He never won in national events but did well. Went deep into the rounds in one class. And that was a short-lived deal. We raced at NHRA Modified in ’81. ’80, ’81, and ’82 in Comp because there was no Modified in 1982. And then he quit.”
The Gilligs race go-karts and later returned to drag racing with a father-tuning and son-driving combination.
Bob Gillig is survived by his wife, Roseannem and gua children Tony and Chrissy. He leaves behind three grandchildren.
“As stuff’s going on, and people are chiming in lately and bringing stuff up, I’m like, people are posting stuff that I don’t even know,” Gillig said. “He helped so many people that the stories are just a pleasant, overwhelming feeling.”
