Of Marty Melo, Bob Sargent and ASA’s future after ownership swap

Walking around the ASA STARS pit area prior to the season opener at New Smyrna Speedway last month, it would be hard-pressed to find anything that was fundamentally different than the year before.

Series founder (and Track Enterprises president) Bob Sargent was making the rounds, and the drivers meetings included the likes of (former) operations director Marty Melo and longtime Champion Racing Association co-owner Glenn Luckett.

Melo has a new title now, by the way.

Under his MPM Promotions banner, Melo purchased the STARS tour and its regional divisions (not including the independent Southern Super Series) from Sargent and Track Enterprises. It was part of a plan years in the making but the consistency from 2025-to-2026 was intentional. 

No stranger to the national Super Late Model scene, Melo has served in a variety of competition and communications roles all the while owning numerous small businesses in and out of racing. Sargent said it was a natural succession outcome.

“There are only seven days in a week and 24 hours in a day and I just couldn’t manufacturer any more of either,” said Sargent. “Lord knows I feel like I tried. Track Enterprises is our mainstay and we’ve done this since 1985, owning and operating racetracks all over the country, from grassroots to NASCAR.

“We took on the series, first the CRA and then Midwest Tour, and partnered with the Southern Super Series in pursuit of a national tour, designed that, and I am very proud of the baby that we have put together.”

Sargent credited Tim Bryant, Joe Balash, RJ Scott, Gregg McKarns and Mark Gundrum for those early days.

“We did all the homework; worked with teams, worked with drivers, worked with promoters, sponsors, fans, and I just felt that we did it right,” Sargent said. “I felt that everyone around me, we just did it right. We had meetings and formed the right groups and continued to work on it.

“But back to the original question, there are only seven days in a week and 24 hours in a day and I had 80 races under Track Enterprises and other businesses. We did a NASCAR race at Rockingham and the Illinois State Fair — trying to do all of that and the series, there just wasn’t enough time in the day.”

It was Bryant, the Southern Super Series, Five Flags Speedway and the Snowball Derby operator that made the connection between Sargent and Melo. When Melo first joined the leadership group as operations director, with a specialty in marketing, it was part of a long-term succession plan that needed to convince Sargent first.

“We didn’t set a time or date, or price, but it was an open-ended thing about how I would like to be considered to have the opportunity to purchase the STARS portion of it,” Melo said. “That kind of morphed, over a year and a half of working with Bob, into CRA and Midwest Tour.

“Bob wasn’t just going to sell it to me right out of the gate, or anyone for that matter, because it’s his baby. In hindsight, he wanted to learn more about me and my capabilities before the opportunity came, and it did happen, so it was always in the cards.”

The takeaway here is that Sargent cares deeply about this discipline. Even moving forward, he is still the promoter of seven events on the ASA STARS schedule and is sticking around as an advisor. Melo says he continues to learn a lot from the multi-time United States racing promoter of the year as well.

“I felt pretty comfortable on the marketing side and PR side because that’s what I do,” Melo said. “The organizational side, I felt good about that, working through the little problems that come up with teams or sponsors; that’s okay.

“But what I’m saying is running the series is one thing but running the series and promoting your own series, that’s a whole other thing, and I’ve learned that working alongside Bob.”

Melo, on his white board, wrote down a slogan that he acquired from Sargent because it stuck with him.

Fair, firm and consistent

“We’ve always done our businesses and our lives that way; if we’re fair, firm and consistent, then ultimately on average, good will come out of it,” Melo said. “In parenthesis on my whiteboard as I look at it now is ‘do the right thing’ and that’s what Bob always says.

“What that means is take the money out of it, take sponsorship out of it, take TV out of it, and take everything out of it — what is the right thing for our group and the racers. Do that. That’s kind of what our motto is right now.”

It’s something that Super Late Model teams, who are regulars, recognize and appreciate out of Sargent. That includes Bubba Pollard, the arguable face of the Super Late Model ecosystem over the past decade.

“Bob is the one who stepped out on a limb,” said Pollard, before laughing to share a joke. “I was joking with him about this the other day but he’s using someone else’s money to do it now and still gets to be involved.

“But seriously, it’s tough. Bob had the biggest hurdle to climb and he did it. This was always going to be tough. It’s not easy. I think this deal is in a good situation moving forward. Hopefully they keep the momentum going and build it better and better. As long as the money is there, it’ll get better, so we’ll see.”

Bond Suss of Wilson Motorsports and Toyota Racing Development echoed that sentiment.

“Bob, obviously, took the leap with a vision to do it, right? I mean, we’ve had a lot of great series go by the wayside. Bob Harmon and All PRO. Rex Robbins’ ASA and John McKarns’ ARTGO.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t had that kind of series for these types of cars so for Bob to have the vision to try to even start something … and he had a lot of encouragement to do it from teams … but you still have to go get it off the ground and rolling and he deserves credit for that.”

For example, Mike Smith, the father of NASCAR racer Chandler Smith, for years tried to put together a national Super Late Model championship and had a sponsorship package of several millions of dollars to do it.

Sargent was aware of that dynamic too and said it was ultimately too hard to convince all the regional promoters to buy in. Sargent literally had to buy the CRA and Midwest Tour, then convince Bryant to buy into a national championship.

“I had many different people say ‘Hey, we had this at the board table on a piece of paper and we decided not to do this at the end,’ and a lot of people told me that,” Sargent said. “So that was frightening going in but that is the life of my business.

“I mean, every day when we go to get a sponsor or put an event on, our stomachs are turning. There is always fear, and I think the day that someone loses fear, that is the day they should get out of the promoting business. There was definitely some skepticism from within the industry and fear on my end.”

Like Pollard, Suss also suggested that the Melos are the ideal figures to take the reign and push this to the next level. That next step, Melo says, is a three-pronged strategy:

1. Bring additional partnerships into the series
2. Convince drivers and teams to actively promote the series they race in
3. Put the best drivers and teams on the best tracks

The first point is obvious, in that increasing the number of sponsorships increases event purses. On the second point, Melo said he spent a year on the road with High Limit Sprint Car champion Marty Melo in 2024 and learned a great deal from his form of self-promotion and fan engagement. The third point is continued expansion west but only if the series can support it while also not competing with CARS Tour West.

To even get to that level of institutional health, Melo says he recognizes that the ASA STARS loyalty program (the Platinum Agreement) needs to begin better supporting the teams in the back half of the field in addition to those who chase the championship each year.

He recognizes that both are of equal importance.

“The Platinum Agreement is healthy and strong at 12, but I can’t just put all of my eggs in that basket because if those middle to backmarker teams for lack of a batter term, if they can’t travel with us long-term, then all we end up with is 12 teams. That isn’t where we want to be either.

“I want a full field of 28. So we’re trying to balance the incentives to grow that, and that’s probably going to come out in 2027, with a part two of the platinum program. We’re working on that.”

Derek Thorn, a Snowball Derby winner and also a multi-time champion across ARCA West and the Southwest Tour, has known the Melos for over two decades. In their time racing together, Thorn has learned one thing about them.

“They care,” Thorn said. “As long as I’ve known Marty, he has loved short track racing. He and Misty both. His personality is a great fit for this series. If a guy, who is running this series, has a problem, Marty has always done everything in his power to correct it. He’s a problem-solver, right?

“I just think if you jot down all the qualities you need in a human being to run a series like ASA STARS, Marty and Misty are perfect fits.”

That isn’t to take away from Sargent either, as Thorn echoed the same general sentiment as everyone else, about the strengths of the Track Enterprises president. Thorn says he only met Sargent recently, upon the creation of this series, but quickly saw why … in his words … that he is a Hall of Famer.

“I don’t think Bob gets enough credit for the vision,” Thorn said. “Beyond that, you look at his resume and he’s a promoting machine; dirt and pavement. To have a guy like that come in and want to build ASA, and put some really good people in place, he has done a tremendous job at getting a really heavy plane off the ground.

“It’s the only field in the country that has this level of competition, and resumes, for these cars. You look at (the opener at New Smyrna) and that field is a testament to what he has done and helped create but also Marty and Misty and their contributions as well.”

Melo is really proud of the teams he has committed to running full-time. That includes Wilson, Anthony Campi Racing, Rette Jones Racing, Wauters Motorsports, GMS Race Cars, JCR3 Racing, Highlands Motorsports and Fredrickson Racing.

That list doesn’t include three of the most popular drivers in the discipline in Bubba Pollard, Stephen Nasse and Ty Majeski. Melo wants them involved, of course, but intends to build stars out of his STARS roster while encouraging everyone else to race with him as much as he can.

“We have a balancing act, and we talk about this in our operational meetings, but are we a development series solely or a place for veterans to land at and make a career out of,” Melo said. “We’ve turned into both with the development side serving the Rackley WARs, Campi and Wilson. Rette Jones does both.

“We talk to OEMs and it’s an honor that Toyota wants Jade (Avedisian) in the STARS series compared to somewhere else. It’s humbling for our series to be looked at this way. The same thing for Tristan McKee and Spire.

“So then you look at the veteran side of it, and they are our star power. It’s hard for them because change is hard on them sometimes. They are used to cherry picking races, and want to go to the tracks they run well at and have fun at, and I realize that too.”

Melo said he recently had a conversation with Nasse and that he’s not Platinum because there’s three races that have conflicts for other things he wants to do.

“Like, the Rattler 250 is coming up and some of our guys are running that races, and from my perspective, I want them to go down there and kick butt,” Melo said. “I support them as long as they run as many of our races as they can and support what we’re doing too.

“A lot of the veterans like to pick and choose, chase money, and we need to continue working to chase them back with a program that appeals to them.”

In many ways, Melo and Sargent will pick up in their new roles what Sargent and Melo were doing in their old roles. They both continue to serve on various industry competition committees and there’s still a check list of things they both want to do to grow Super Late Model racing.

Sargent actually thinks he has more time to get to some of those line-item needs now. He wants to build a better fan engagement and hospitality structure, similar to what Dirt Late Models and Sprint Cars have at their events.

“I really think I have more time now to pinpoint my efforts towards cost-containment, compared to when I was running the whole show,” Sargent said. “Maybe I didn’t get to spend as much time on that as I wanted.

“It’s a major talking point from NASCAR all the way to go-karts and we’re all trying to figure this out together. I spend so much time in ARCA and that’s most of the conversations we have there, cost containment.

“So maybe I can start to take some lessons from other series I promote and figure out how to apply some of them here.”

 When asked what he wants ASA to look like in five years, Melo says he wants more cars and more eye balls on TrackTV watching those events.

“Healthy and strong is where we want to be,” Melo said. “What does that mean? Better purse money, better backside start money and tow monies, however you want to look at that. We need to figure out how to keep fans coming back, which means partnerships, and full fields.

“We averaged 24 cars last year, which is great in these times, but my full field is 28 so in five years I better be at 29 cars. We are working on plans to get teams there too. We are long-term committed.

“We have some strong partnerships but we need a couple of more large ones that are long-term committed too. We need more of those second and third tier partners but we have plans for all of that too.”