MEGHAN MISSING SHOOTOUT SIZZLER
Young Dillner Having Surgery on Jaw but Vows to Return
by Matt Kentfield
There are a few things that are guarantees on Tuesday nights at Lowe’s Motor Speedway during the Summer Shootout season. There’s guaranteed to be some new faces in victory lane on occasion, just as there’s guaranteed to be a few hot tempers and plenty of bent-up fenders.
There’s also one other guarantee every week; if you look toward the #51 Bandolero Young Gun, it’s that driver Meghan Dillner, whether she is inside the cockpit or hanging out by the car in the garage, has a giant smile on her face.
Dillner has become a favorite both of her many friends inside the Shootout pit area and the fans in the grandstands because of her youthfully enthusiastic attitude towards life and racing, plus the 24-7 smile that seems to be permanently affixed to her freckled face.
Dillner has hit a peak in the fun department this year, some of which has been due to her consistent on-track
performance improvements and that has made her signature smile bigger than ever. But unfortunately, the 14-year-old’s summer of fun has come to an end.
With three events remaining, Dillner will be taking the rest of the Shootout off. Major jaw surgery will keep the driver of the purple-and-green #51 machine out of the seat for the remainder of the season.
“Next Tuesday, I’m having jaw surgery. They are going to take the upper part of my jaw out, break it and then reset it because I can’t close it (her mouth) all the way right now,” said Dillner, who just turned 14-years-old. “It’s going to keep me out for the rest of the Shootout and I don’t know how long after that. I know I can’t do any physical activities for a couple months, and I won’t even be able to eat solid foods for at least a month.”
Does it get any worse for a 14-year-old to not be able to play around with her friends like usual or eat solid foods? Well, it may not be so bad, as Dillner points out, but not being able to race is the worst part of the entire surgery experience.
“Honestly, I get to eat shakes and ice cream and all kinds of good stuff like that, so I’m going to miss being in the seat more than not eating solid foods.”
Dillner is going to miss being behind the wheel even more because of the marked improvement she has made on the track during the 2007 Shootout season. Since her debut at the Shootout in 2005, Dillner has made progress every time on the track, but in the highly-competitive Summer Shootout features, Dillner had yet to find the consistent, up-front runs that she had been yearning for.
Meghan Dillner has been fast this year in the #51.
In 2007, however, the consistent improvement over the last few seasons made Dillner a week-in and week-out strong runner. Considered a back-of-the-pack runner in years past, Dillner became a top-10 contender every time out in the first seven weeks of the Shootout. She found a mixed bag of results running up front this season, as she quickly realized that running up front meant a better chance of getting knocked around, which is why the finishes haven’t been as consistently strong as they could have.
Meghan getting instructions from her father Bob (left) and uncle Matt (right) for her final Shootout race of 2007.
But now, Dillner will have to wait to capitalize on that improvement and turn around her luck that she hopes will lead to her first Young Gun Division Shootout victory until 2008.
“This is bad timing because I feel like I’ve improved a lot this year,” said Dillner. “I’ve been having a lot more fun this year, too; maybe that’s why I’ve improved. This year, since I’ve been doing better, I just want to keep working at getting better. It feels like I’m stopping now just when I need to keep getting better.
“I think the more I race, the more I enjoy it. For a while, I was just staying the same and it started getting less fun for me. This year, I really wanted to do good, but I wanted to be having the same kind of fun that I was having when I first started racing. I really tried to go back to the Shootout and keep working at having fun while I was working to get better in the car too.”
Even though Dillner won’t be able to race for the remainder of the Shootout, she won’t be kept away from Lowe’s for too long. She has made it her personal goal to make it back to the Shootout to cheer on her BDI Racing teammates as soon as the week after her surgery, albeit silently because she won’t even be able to talk at that point in her recovery process.
“It’s very important to me to be there because the racetrack this summer has been my life. Everybody on the crew, we’re all like a family now,” added Dillner, who ended the first seven weeks of the Shootout in the top-15 in points. “I haven’t had friends outside of the racetrack all summer because this is all I’ve been doing all summer and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want to be there to support them and to help them as much as I can, even though I’m going to be feeling pretty lousy myself.”
Dillner will be back behind the wheel soon.
Nobody can blame young Dillner for being disappointed in not being able to finish out the Summer Shootout. Nobody can blame her for being nervous about her surgery, either. But not even major surgery can keep the smile off Meghan Dillner’s face – a smile she hopes to show inside her racecar again soon.
“Everybody’s been asking if I am nervous, excited or just happy to be having my jaw fixed. Of course I’m nervous; it’s a major surgery. I’ve never had any kind of surgery before or anything like that,” continued Dillner, who has the condition she is going to correct with surgery due to a scooter accident when she was younger. “Yeah I’m nervous because of that, but for the most part I’m really excited because this bite affects my speech and it affects the way I eat. I can’t even bite into a piece of pizza because it would fall right back out. So I’m nervous and excited because I want to get it over with and I know if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to get it done.
“Plus, the sooner I get it done, the sooner I get back out on the racetrack.”
