As the new national ASA stock car tour heads to Kaukauna, it's still a work in progress

A year ago at this time, the ASA STARS National Tour existed only as a concept. Now its first season is more than half over.

As the series prepares for its third and final Wisconsin stop Tuesday at Wisconsin International Raceway, it’s clearly a work in progress, having shown both the signs of progress its backers hoped and issues they hadn’t fully anticipated.

In many ways, this Gandrud Auto Group 250 will look much like recent editions of an event that started in 1981 at the D-shaped half-mile in Kaukauna.

It’s still the longest race of its type in the state, one of the most prestigious and with a $15,000 top prize among the most lucrative. It’s still part of the Midwest Tour – now with ASA branding, rather than ARCA – and will attract a handful of top national touring stars to compete alongside the regional competitors.

In other ways, though, it’s likely to be different.

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“As far as last Thursday, I was the only local guy that was possibly considering it, and really it comes down to a financial situation,” said Andy Monday, the 2017 WIR weekly super late model champion.

“When I kind of sat down and did my budget for this race, really you’d have to finish third place or better to kind of get your money back. Third place pays $3,000, and by the time you pay your entry fees, tires and 20 gallons of fuel, you’re already at that.”

That equates to about six weeks of the 16-race regular season, Monday estimated.

While cost also has been a factor in the past, it has been exacerbated by the consolidated rules of the National Tour, which don’t completely parallel what the Midwest Tour, its two regional sister series or tracks in the Upper Midwest have used in the past.

“At first blush, we didn’t realize that there were this many glaring differences in the rules,” said longtime promoter Bob Sargent, the driving force behind the series. “They all look like super late models out there racing, but man, we found out there were differences.”

An entry list is expected to be released Friday and is likely to be smaller. WIR Thursday night regulars alone have accounted for eight competitors in recent years, by Monday’s count.

“That supplements the car count and that supplements the fan count,” Monday said. “I mean, if you don’t have any locals racing, what is the impact of that on the fans too?”

That said, drivers who have committed include Ty Majeski, the Seymour native who has won the 250 three of the past four years; Paul Shafer Jr., who won in 2021; Sammy Smith, a NASCAR Xfinity Series winner who finished second to Shafer; and Luke Fenhaus, an ARCA winner from Wausau who is emerging as a top-level short-track barnstormer. Majeski, also a regular in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, leads Canadian Cole Butcher atop the standings.

Wisconsin drivers hold the top three spots in the Midwest Tour points: Gabe Sommers of Plover, Levon Van Der Geest of Merrill and Justin Mondeik of Gleason.

Majeski said he considered the STARS National Tour as a work in progress, and that’s an assessment with which Sargent wouldn’t argue.

Sargent’s Track Enterprises operates the National Tour and owns or partners with the three regional ASA series – the Midwest Tour, CRA Super Series and Southern Super Series – that run independently but also feed into the National Tour.

The concept of comparable rules for asphalt super late models and an impossible-to-ignore national series had been on his mind for years. The series finally came together late last year.

“I think we have met our expectations with the caveat that we realize that we have a lot of room for improvement and growth” Sargent said.

“We quickly realized how difficult a project of this magnitude is. And by difficult, I think we found out that gathering teams from across the United States … has been more difficult than we anticipated. We didn’t realize the differing opinions of rules, race procedures, etc.

“Now I will say the positive that’s come out of it is it’s a very unified goal in the end. Everyone seems to want this and want a more national scene instead of being splintered, as we’ve found this year.”

One of the biggest sticking points related to the Midwest has been engine equivalency.

Slinger Speedway’s opener was part of the Midwest Tour for the second year, but it’s Slinger Nationals in July was dropped from the National Tour schedule when a compromise that would satisfy local teams and series regulars couldn’t be reached.

Along the same lines, super late models in this area, including the Midwest Tour, run with two-barrel carburetors, whereas the National Tour uses four-barrel carburetors. To make the switch properly, a local team might spend more than $2,000 for a piece it would use just once in a season, one top driver estimated.

“Maybe instead of trying to have a national series with a national rulebook, they need to fit each of the races and follow the local rulebook and the half a dozen guys that have multiple cars and can travel all over the country can bring a different car, a different engine package, whatever, for that specific venue, vs. the other,” Monday said.

It seems the STARS National Tour may be having an effect on the Midwest Tour’s car count as drivers such as Austin Nason of Roscoe, Illinois, chase races farther from home. Five of the six Midwest Tour races so far have had fewer entries than last year, the exception being the event at Madison International Speedway that also was part of the National Tour.

Still, STARS competitors are hopeful.

“We’ve been through some ups and downs and a learning curve for sure, the whole tour, but I know they’re doing everything they can to make it better and that’s all we can ask for,” said Butcher, winner of the most recent STARS National Tour race two weeks ago in Anderson, Indiana.

Teams have found travel more expensive than anticipated, and the number of midweek races such as Kaukauna are taking a toll on volunteer crews.

Sponsors will be easier to attract now that the STARS National Tour is beyond the pencil-on-paper stage and Sargent’s people have something tangible to sell. A broadcast or streaming deal should make teams’ marketing partnerships more valuable as well, and the series is close to putting one together, Sargent said.

With all of that as a backdrop, Sargent was asked about whether Tuesday’s race at WIR really benefits from being a part of a national series.

“We think that this style of pavement racing has got a tremendous boost in national recognition and buzz, talk, whatever you want to call it, whereas sometimes you get a feeling maybe it’s a little depressed, maybe we’re losing teams,” he said.

“We feel like this gave pavement short track racing a lot more exposure, a lot more people talking about it, a lot more teams looking at being involved in it. From that standpoint we think, can you see (a difference) today? A little bit. Do we think you’re going to see a lot more as we move forward? Yes.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ASA STARS National Tour set for last Wisconsin stop of first season