Ronnie Bassett Jr celebrates winning the race with his brother Dillon Bassett who won the 2013 UARA Championship.
Ronnie Bassett Jr and Dillon Bassett are our next guests on Fan4Racing Fan2Fan NASCAR & Race Talk on Monday, July 28th at 9:15 and 9:35 pm ET. Call 347-996-5176 during the LIVE broadcast to interact with the Bassett brothers.
NASCAR K&N Pro Series East driver, Ronnie Bassett Jr and his brother Dillon, a NASCAR Whelen All-American competitor are following in their father’s footsteps and earning their own success in racing.
In 2004, Ronnie Basset Jr began his racing career at the age of eight, encouraged by his father Ronnie Bassett Sr. In 2006, at the age of ten he won 32 races en route to becoming the youngest Bandolero National Champion and North Carolina State
Ronnie Bassett Jr.
Champion. He went on to become the youngest Young Gun class champion in 2007 in addition to earning the Lowe’s Summer Shootout and NC State Championships. In 2009 he progressed to full-bodied stock cars, adding Whelen All-American Series to his late-model schedule in 2012 and scoring five wins in six starts.
Bassett Jr made his NASCAR K&N Pro Series East début at Greenville Pickens Speedway in September 2013. He picked up his first series top-five in March this year at Greenville and is now eighth in the series’ point standings after 11 races.
Dillon Bassett followed both his father and brother into racing at eight years of age in Bandoleros during the 2005 season. The younger Bassett set records of his own by bringing home a national championship in only his second year of racing in 2006 and backed it up by claiming three national championships in 2007. Bassett won the most popular driver in the Summer Shootout Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway and in 2009 he added the Legend car division to his schedule. Racing at 40 different tracks, he collected multiple wins and a total of ten championships between both series.
Following his brother’s lead, the younger Bassett moved into full-bodied stock cars in 2010 participating in four limited late-model races at Ace Speedway. He then went on to run the full limited schedule winning the 2011 championship in a dominant way. He claimed 12 wins – ten consecutively. That same year, he made his first UARA late-model start at Newport and raced in the Myrtle Beach 400 late-model stock race.
Dillon Bassett
In only his eighth UARA start, Bassett claimed his first win at Hickory Motor Speedway, going on to pick up his second victory at Kingsport. He also earned three runner-up finishes, five top-fives, one pole, and the 2012 Rookie of the Year title while finishing second in the point standings. In eight attempts, he won his first UARA race compared to his brother Ronnie’s 24 attempts before winning. At this point, Dillon is the only Bassett to hold a championship in a full body stock car.
In 2014 Dillon Bassett has an impressive season in NASCAR’s Whelen All-American Series. In 23 races he has 22 top-ten finishes along with 19 top-fives and seven wins and is fifth in the Top 500 National point standings
Now 17, Dillon Bassett of Winston-Salem, N.C., had no immediate plan for success so soon.
“This is just the way it’s happening,” Bassett said. “Going into the season we had no intentions of being in championship point standings. We just wanted to focus on our equipment and try to win races.”
His plan for 2014 was moving into the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series from touring series late-model competition. Bassett won the UARA series championship with three wins in 2013 after being its top rookie in 2012.
Ronnie Bassett Sr, a past Whelen All-American Series track champion, planned a racing program for both his sons this year. Ronnie Bassett Jr, 18, is running the full K&N East schedule while Dillon is racing as much as possible in the Whelen All-American Series. The complication is that both cars share much of the same team.
“Toward the end of last year we decided I’d run some NASCAR Whelen All-American Series races this year to get use to NASCAR and their routine of how they run events. Points and championships were not part of the plan,” the youngest Bassett said.
“Growing up, dad never had us racing weekly at one track. I think I’ve run at 50 tracks in several states. That helped me and the team learn to adjust to different tracks. We can be fast out of the box.”
Bassett Sr. raced full-time from 1993-2001 at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C. He topped a five-year stint in stadium stocks with a championship in 1997. He then raced in the sportsman division from 1998-2001, with a best point race finish of second in 2000.
“Dad said winning a track championship is cool, but to be a series driver you have to go to a new track every week and run good. We’re hoping I can run a few NASCAR K&N Pro Series races at the end of the season,” Dillon Bassett said.
Bassett Sr. is car owner for both sons and Seth Smith works with both as crew chief.
*Photo credit – Bassett facebook pages