Wyatt Gardner has never really ran a full season for points at Monroe, Washington’s Evergreen Speedway, but he may have to this season.

Following Gardner’s season-opening win at Evergreen last weekend, he’s found there’s “a little bit of magic left in the racing world,” he said in a recent phone interview.

For the first race of the season in the NASCAR Home Track’s Speedway Chevrolet Pro Late Model division, Gardner’s car showed speed all day, leading the second practice and qualifying on the pole. He started the race fourth after an invert, and said “I knew we just had to be patient.”

He rode in third for 10 laps and then picked off the second place car. After riding safely there for a few more laps, he saw the opportunity to pass the race leader.

“We kind of took off, kind of checked out from the field, and built up myself quite a bit of a lead,” he added.

From there, the caution flags started waving with about 20 laps remaining and “things got real stressful, real quick” Gardner said.

“You know, you build up a huge lead like that and you figure you can kind of cruise the end,” he added. “And then people start spinning, yellows are coming out, and you start having to go four or five restarts later. It gets a little interesting.”

On the final restart with five to go, Gardner said he fired off strong and was able to pull away with the lead.

Leading the race following the white flag, he got emotional. Tears filled in his eyes under his helmet during his last lap.

It was his first win at Evergreen, and also his first win without his dad by his side. Gardner’s father, Ben, died just more than a month before the season opener.

“We were able to bring it home and it was just one of those things where just something magical was in the air that night,” Gardner said.

The first thing Gardner did when he got out of his car was find his mom so he could share the moment with her.

“Obviously she’s had a rough go, and being able to share that with her, it doesn’t fill the void in your life, but it definitely shows you that he is still there and still looking out for us.”

Gardner’s dad was the one who got him into racing at three years old. His siblings also raced, and Gardner said he jokes with people he didn’t really have a choice but to also follow them.

“It was just kind of a family thing,” he said. “My dad got me into it at a really young age and I’ve been racing ever since.”

From micro sprints to road courses, go-karts, and mini-stocks, Gardner has raced just about every discipline of car. When he was in college in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, he raced on both coasts before returning to Washington and racing full-time around his home state after graduation.

Ben was still helping Gardner through the offseason, though he had taken a bit of a step back in recent years, serving as more of an observer and supporter.

“It’s definitely hard every race going to the track without him,” Gardner said. “It’s definitely, it’s a test, but it’s one of those things where he’d want us to keep racing. There was definitely a question of, ‘Hey, should we do this? Or should we take a year off?’ But, knowing him, he’d want us to keep racing and that’s what we’re going to do.”

For the last four years, Gardner has been just running big shows around Washington, never really settling on one track. Evergreen has always been considered his home track, though, which made last week’s win even more special. He’s qualified on the pole in the past and had good cars there, but said “We’ve had a lot of dumb luck over the years that has kept us from getting a win.”

“Our cars are really good, and we’ve always had speed, but we finally kind of hit on a few things that are really good for long run speed.

“We finally were able to get that monkey off our back and give us a little more confidence going the rest of the year.”

He called the victory, “definitely a good way to kick the season off,” but it still came with complications. He has sponsor obligations to compete in other big races throughout the summer, while he’d also like to now try to go for an Evergreen track championship and possibly a Washington state title.

Ultimately, more racing is a good problem to have, even if it could make for some stressful weeks.

“We really haven’t ever chased the championship,” Gardner said. “It definitely put us in a weird position I really wasn’t anticipating. I mean, we wanted to run the full calendar, but there’s never any real expectations.

“You can’t ever set your sights on winning a championship. You just kind of have to take it race by race and whatever happens, happens.”

Racing returns to Evergreen Speedway this Saturday for the City of Monroe Industry Night Presented by Hill Street Cleaners. The night will feature Pro Late Models, Street Stocks, Hornets, Stinger 8s, and Youth Hornets.

“Not a lot of sleep in my near future, trying to get the car turned around and maintained in between races,” Gardner said. “We’re definitely going to try and race as much as we can… For right now it’s just one way, one race at a time and just keep chugging away.

“Hopefully we’ll be talking to you again when we can start talking about the championship a little bit later in the year.”

Last year’s zMAX CARS Tour race at New River All American Speedway felt like old times for veteran Ronnie Bassett Jr.

After running up front all evening, the closing stages saw Ronnie try to chase down Brenden Queen for his first CARS Tour victory. An attempted bump-and-run by Ronnie on the final lap didn’t work as intended, but he still brought home a third-place finish.

Ronnie went his entire debut season in the CARS Tour without a victory, but runs like the one at New River highlighted just how close he was to emulating his past success in Late Model Stocks despite being away from the discipline for so long.

“We had some strong runs last year,” Ronnie said. “When we got to New River, we realized it was a tire conservation race, but we worked on our car all weekend to make it really good. At the end, we just came up a couple of spots short.”

In their youth, Ronnie and his younger brother Dillon garnered a reputation as hard-nosed, but efficient competitors. Among the accomplishments the elder Bassett accumulated in a Late Model Stock were victories in the Bobby Isaac Memorial at Hickory Motor Speedway and Thanksgiving Classic at Southern National Motorsports Park.

The success enjoyed by the Bassetts in Late Model Stocks made it inevitable for them to progress through the developmental ladder. In 2013, the Bassett family formally broke into the ARCA Menards Series East with Ronnie making his debut at Dover Motor Speedway, which laid the foundation for a full-time campaign the following year.

Everything went according to plan for Ronnie during his first years in the East Series. Although he didn’t find Victory Lane, Ronnie held his own with many of the best NASCAR prospects at the time with five top-five finishes between 2014-15, all while Dillon broke through for his first victory at Motordrome Speedway.

The momentum the Bassetts initially enjoyed was undone on a fateful night in May of 2016.

While the family was doing work at the shop, one of their trucks caught fire. That fire rapidly spread around the facility. None of the Bassetts were injured, but the blaze caused serious damage to their shop, with all their cars being destroyed in the process.

Ronnie suddenly found himself at a crossroads with no usable racing equipment at his family’s disposal. As devastating as the fire was, Ronnie was not going to let the circumstances take away a dream he and his family had worked hard to achieve all their lives.

“We didn’t really know if we would get back to racing after that,” Ronnie said. “That was a tough deal, but fortunately we had some good people in the racing community help us get to the next couple of races. Thankfully, here we are.”

With help from their fellow East Series competitors, Ronnie and Dillon were back on track just more than a week after the fire upended their way of living.

Less than a year later, Ronnie was an East Series winner, earning a victory in the season-opening event at New Smyrna Speedway.

Feeling confident in the quality of his equipment, Ronnie was ready to take another step forward with Dillon by moving up to the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2019. The brothers only had a small number of resources at their disposal, but they were gradually starting to amass decent results against other small Xfinity programs.

Two crucial blows in quick succession set the Bassett family back once again.

During an overtime restart for the 2020 Shady Rays 200 at Kentucky Speedway, contact with Justin Allgaier sent Ronnie into the inside retaining wall. The ensuing collision destroyed the lone car the Bassetts had in their garage, bringing their 2020 season to a premature end.

For 2021, Ronnie and Dillon tried a fresh approach by branching off from DGM Racing, who they had been partnered with since entering the Xfinity Series. This decision carried an immense risk for the brothers, as COVID-19 protocols meant a metric would set the field on a combination of factors that included owner points, which the Bassetts didn’t have.

Qualifying for the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway was cancelled due to rain. With only a handful of opportunities to compete throughout the rest of 2021 because of metric qualifying, Ronnie and Dillon quickly fell behind the rest of their competition.

Sensing that they could not make up the lost ground with their limited funding, Ronnie confided with his family that the best option would be to shut down their Xfinity Series program and return to his Late Model Stock roots.

“There was going to be a point where the cars we had would not be sellable,” Ronnie said. “I told my dad at the end of [2022] that if we were seriously thinking about going Late Model Stock racing, now would be the time to do it with how valuable our cars were to other people. We got rid of those cars and were able to buy our own stuff for Late Model Stock racing.”

Now fully settled into the Late Model Stock scene once again, Ronnie feels he is right where he belongs at this point in his career. Despite this, Ronnie admitted that he is still adjusting to the plethora of changes that have enveloped the discipline since the mid-2010s.

Ronnie said riding around and conserving equipment during the opening portion of a race does not carry as much of a benefit compared to a decade ago. With as equal as the cars are now, Ronnie believes there is more incentive to maintain track position to have an opportunity to the win.

Placing himself near the front of the field proved to be a challenge for Ronnie in year one with the CARS Tour, only qualifying inside the top-five twice. On days where he struggled in qualifying, Ronnie’s experience helped him methodically climb to the front, as he ended the year with five top fives, which included three consecutive third-place finishes in the summer.

Ronnie knows his cars are more than capable of winning a CARS Tour race. The key to taking that next step is to be quicker at the start of race day as opposed to just finding speed near the end.

“We have to improve on qualifying and be better from lap one to 90,” Ronnie said. “Our car usually came along with 35 to go, but I’d like for that to happen with 50 to go. That way, we don’t have to run as hard as long. Hopefully we can fine tune on a few things and be better earlier in the races.”

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The path to Victory Lane for Ronnie became more challenging with an influx of full-time competitors into the CARS Tour, yet he has never been one to back down from any obstacle standing in his way.

From dealing with a devastating shop fire to enduring numerous setbacks with his now defunct Xfinity Series program, Ronnie emerged from each tribulation more mature and determined to prove that he is still a race-winning driver.

Each weekend gets Ronnie closer to finally breaking through for his maiden CARS Tour victory and showing his kids just how efficient their dad was at the genesis of his Late Model Stock career.

“The coolest thing would be to share a [CARS Tour] win with my wife and my two kids,” Ronnie said. “Every time I come home, my kids talk about how I was so close to winning. I want to celebrate with them in Victory Lane and we’re going to work hard to make that happen.”