The Sparkplug of the Bando Bandits - Getting to Know Dillon Bassett

by Meghan Dillner

There are many different types of kids in the world.  Some will float from one sport to the next, enjoying the ride, but not ready to dedicate their life to one game. Then there are those that commit their days to more or less one style of competition; Dillon Basset is one of those kids.

As a nine-year-old boy only in the fourth grade, you can see Dillon regularly at tracks around the southeast.  He’s won at some of the best tracks on the circuit, tracks like Lowes Motor Speedway, Concord Motorsport Park, Atlanta Motor Speedway, and Orlando Speedworld. In fact, he won the “Winter Nationals” championship at Orlando this winter.

Dillon has always been fast, but he has a newfound consistency that most people feel began during the “Winter Heat” at Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s 1/5 mile track.  But where did it come from?  Just like boys practice baseball in their backyard, so does Dillon with his racing.

“I just got faster somehow; I just followed my brother’s line around our quarter-mile track in our backyard,” explained Dillon, whose parents built a track at their home near Winston Salem to help their kids learn how to race.  “We practice a lot there because that’s where we usually run-in tires.”

Ask anyone at any Bandolero track in the Carolinas and you can be rest-assured that they know about the Basset family.  But Dillon might be better known around the track as the small, but speedy Sparkplug.

“I used to play basketball and then I went to a basketball camp and I was the fastest kid out of the whole camp with kids from kindergarten to sixth grade,” says Dillon when asked about how he got his nickname.  “Most people are really surprised to learn that I am so small and so fast.”

Dillon is not only fast on foot, but also when it comes to racing his #44 Bandolero.  In fact, he is often seen leading the pack.  He has competed in all nine races of Concord’s spring season and after last Friday night’s race he has now scored four wins in-a-row.  Currently standing third in points in the Bandit division, and with a family as racing-related as his, victories are purely in his nature.

The Bassett brother's cars look similiar.

“My dad first started with racing late-models at Bowman Gray; then my brother Ronnie started racing and then I did.”

When Dillon first began racing, he competed in the Bandolero Bandits with his older brother, Ronnie, in the ever-popular Summer Shootout.  Now that Ronnie has moved up into the Young Guns class, Dillon remarked on the hardships of running with his brother.

“It was harder racing with Ronnie because if we would hit each other we’d both get in trouble,” commented Dillon.

As a matter of fact, there was one such scenario in the Shootout, which was highlighted on SPEED Channel last winter, where Sparkplug accidentally rammed his brother Ronnie, after the older sibling had wrecked on the straightaway.

Were there any arguments that night?  “Yes… a lot,” Dillon says with a tiny laugh.

It was often times hard to tell the brothers’ cars apart in the Bandit division because of their similar paint scheme, but their numbers proved their identities.  Dillon explains, “My dad’s number when he raced was 44 and so was his cousin’s number.  But when my brother started racing, Zach (Stroupe) was the 44 in the Bandoleros.  Chris is the guy that helps us and he was 04 when he raced, so Ronnie wanted to be 04 since he couldn’t be 44.  Then, when Zach moved up, I got to be 44.”

Not only does Dillon have an older brother, but he has a younger brother that proves just as racing crazy as his two older siblings.

“He’s racing go karts right now and in about two or three years he is going to race Bandoleros,” says Dillon.  For now, his younger brother, often known as “Grasshopper” around the track, is his brothers’ biggest fan, happily spraying his water bottle all over Dillon and his brother Ronnie after they reeled in twin first place finishes last week at Concord.

This isn’t the only form of celebrating displayed at the track.  After drivers wrap up their heat races, you can often see them playing a little football next to their trailers.  Luckily for Dillon, this is his other favorite sport.  But, as Dillon is fully aware of, he won’t be playing either sport if he doesn’t keep his grades up in school.  How high exactly?  “A 95 or 100,” he answers, “on report cards and tests.”  He is also very proud of the fact that he is currently living up to his parents’ standards.

Living up to these standards is the only way that Dillon will be able to

Racing, and winning, is a Bassett family affair. (LN Photo)

become a professional racecar driver, just like his role-models Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, and Jeff Burton.  Like them, Dillon would like to turn his racing future into a NASCAR career!