Sometimes, to go forward, one must go backwards or at least something that looks like backwards, anyway.
Ronnie Bassett Jr. enjoyed a successful Late Model stint in the 2010s before his dad, and brother Dillon, made the jump to the K&N Pro Series and then the Xfinity Series. The team was started by the senior Bassett, fielding cars for both brothers, up the ladder until last season.
The family has won at everything they have entered over the years, but the COVID era of NASCAR racing dealt them an especially tough hand with fields being set by the metric rather than time trials and it became increasingly harder for them to make races.
“Our whole goal in jumping into the Xfinity Series was establishing it as a business,” said Bassett Jr. “Unfortunately, everyone blames stuff on COVID but really, when they cut practice out, we were full-time the year before and now we’re sitting home unless we meet someone else’s price to run their number.”
Enter his plans for 2023 — running full-time in a Late Model Stock across the CARS Tour, Virginia Triple Crown and all the marquee races.
It’s a return to what the family did a decade ago when it dominated stretches of the UARA Series.
“We hope we can get this deal going and established and maybe make it a business and run itself,” Dillon said. “But for the time being, we’re dead set on me winning races and driving the car and hopefully build something special here.”
Even though it didn’t work out, at least this time, the Bassetts are proud of what they tried to build over the past five years. And going back to Late Model racing with Ronnie Jr. doesn’t mean the NASCAR dream is especially over.
It’s just a reset, and the family recognizing an opportunity in the explosive growth of the CARS Tour over the past several years, and more so now with the new ownership group.
“Obviously, you have to have funding to do all kinds of racing,” Bassett said. “It was really financially hard on us. We’re a family owned business trying to compete with multimillion-dollar teams. I feel like we worked just as hard if not harder than a winning team.
“I want to win races and contend so we scaled back, and we do feel like this is a level playing field to show what we can do.”
A 16th and 3rd place finish in the first two races has Bassett seventh in the early CARS Tour standings but just 21 points out of the lead. The biggest cause for optimism is that he doesn’t have a notebook on this car yet.
Further, there are reinforcements on the way as the Bassetts prepare to build a business and increase their notebook.
“We actually have two new cars at the shop we haven’t put together yet,” Bassett said. “Once we get all three of them done, we can do this full-time, the Triple Crown, Martinsville, do some Kenly too.
“We haven’t raced a lot the last few years so we want to go race as much as we can and get back in a rhythm with these cars and against this competition. There are so many good teams right now compared to the last time we did this and that’s going to make us better too.”
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