Putting together a driver roster for 2024 ASA STARS season

ASA STARS has a schedule for its second season, is still awaiting details for what will hopefully be a strong winners circle program, and teams to contest the full slate of races.

First, for a national Super Late Model championship to work, it reasonably needs Bubba Pollard on board and in the mix. This sounds likely to happen next season.

“Yeah, I think so,” Pollard told Short Track Scene during Snowball Derby weekend. “We just got off to a rough start, from the very first race, and it was just off on a wrong foot.”

To his point, Pollard was in position to win the inaugural event at Five Flags Speedway but was wrecked by Casey Roderick. Pollard then initiated a fight in the inspection area after Roderick won and was subject to a penalty as a result.

He won at North Wilkesboro Speedway to get back in the championship picture but then fell out of the race at Hickory Motor Speedway the next week when a piece of pavement came up and puncture his grill.

Pollard did not participate in the races at Toledo and then the Winchester 400.

“It started off bad and we just never recovered,” Pollard said. “Just had a lot of things go on. We was kind of back in the hunt after winning North Wilkesboro after having a good run at Madison and at Hickory, we had a good car we could have won or ran top-three.

“Hopefully we can get bacl and try to win more of those races and give it a shot.”

Ty Majeski wins 56th Snowball Derby as Nasse, Pollard dramatically do not

Especially given how the Snowball Derby ended, ASA STARS would do well to have Pollard and Nasse in the mix but the latter is more wishy-washy on the subject.

Nasse has also started to dabble in Late Model Stock Cars and has suggested he will be at the CARS Tour opener at Southern National in March.

If he has a good day there, he will keep racing with them and if he has a good ASA start, he will keep racing those.

“It all depends on points, right,” Nasse said. “Supers, Late Model Stocks, ASA, Southern Super Series, I consider them all my home. We like to race a little bit of everything but sometimes, if the points make sense and there’s a good payout there, that’s something we want to keep an open mind towards.”

Nasse also said after the Derby he wasn’t sure he would be able to race with Anthony Campi Racing as much as he did this year because they have other things happening next year but still hoped to pair for the big races.

The inevitability of Ty Majeski and Toby Nuttleman

Lastly, there is the reigning champion, Ty Majeski, who still could conceivably run for a second title next year as none of the races conflict with the NASCAR Truck Series but he has some things he wants to see done better in 2024.

“One thing SRL does a good job of is you have a question and there is one guy to ask,” Majeski said. “You ask Ricky (Brooks) and you get your answer. ASA? Do you go to Bob (Sargent), Joe (Balash) or Gadget. There are a lot of people that have authority in different areas, and some of them overlap, and it’s a little convoluted at the top.

“Each of them do a good job at their respective areas but for us, it’s a little bit confusing over who to go to, especially if it’s something small, but I do think overall that it was a very good first year.

“We saw pretty decent car counts in the Midwest, the CRA races, not so good, so you have to go where you can get the following and where you can get the most cars and find teams willing to do the full tour.

“And that’s important, because if you don’t have teams following the full tour, what do you have? I think there were five cars that ran every race so if I’m Bob, I have to find a way to get more teams to run full-time to create storylines like with me and Cole (Butcher) and that’s what draws people to follow a whole season.”

So what ultimately has Majeski iffy on returning for a second full season?

“It took a lot out of our team,” Majeski said. “We don’t have full-time guys like some of these cars do. Our only full-time guy is Toby (Nuttleman) so were scarce on help for a lot of those races. It was tough to do.

“Initially, right now, I would say probably not but you never know where the season will take us. We’ll see what kind of funding we have and see how the schedule shakes out and go from there.”

Beyond those big three, it stands to reason that Wilson Motorsports will have at least a couple of full-time cars and one for Butcher next season and Campi could be an option with his new obligations for 2024 as well. Rette Jones Racing is also exploring the option of racing full-time next season with a driver or a mix of drivers that could include Noah Gragson where his Cup Series schedule allows.

Austin Nason was also a fixture on the tour in 2023 and could be a reasonable return as well.