Stephen Leicht was champion...
Stephen Leicht was champion of the ASA Late Model Series in 2005. Bob Milner
While the cars in all three divisions are siblings, the rules are just a bit different.
The Northern and Southern Divisions will use a bias-ply tire and races will be shorter. The Challenge Division will use a radial tire and run longer events, with a competition yellow at the mid-point. During the yellow, teams can do just about anything but change tires.
"With the crate engine, no fuel stops, and a limit built into what you can do to the car, a driver can take two friends and go racing," Haun says. "You don't need an extensive pit crew. The only position we require is a spotter."
Haun says the cars in all divisions will be allowed to camber the rear axles up to 1.5 degrees.
"So a driver could take a Southern Division car and run the Challenge Division by just towing north and slapping a set of radials on it," he says.
An extra appeal of the Challenge Division is that 10 of its races will be televised on the Outdoor Channel.
"It's a pretty good package for a series as new as this one," he says.
Because the Challenge Series uses radials, "our brothers down South can look at this as a development series for youngsters who may want to move up" into NASCAR.
Stephen Leicht, the 2005 ASA Late Model champion, is a good example.
After winning five races and the season title for WalTom Racing, the 18-year-old Leicht was tapped by Robert Yates to be one of two development drivers in the RYR Busch program this year.
The youngster's success is an inspiration to guys like Tomlinson.
"I think everyone who ever gets in a race car dreams of moving up into a Cup car," Tomlinson says. "Sure, I'd like to do that, too. I'd like to quit my day job and drive full time. But if it never happens, I'm perfectly satisfied running in the Late Model Series.
"The organizers and the other drivers all take care of one another," he says. "The Varneys have always kept their word. The competitors turn out to help if a driver is in trouble and needs a hand.
The name's the same, but everything else is different. There are, in essence, two ASAs.
When the original ASA folded in 2004, both Ron Varney and Dennis Huth bought pieces of it, and today they run separate businesses using ASA in the title.
Varney bought back the Midwest-based racing program he had created a few years earlier and renamed it the ASA Late Model Series.
Huth, who had worked for ASA when it folded, purchased the ASA track program, which sanctions local series and also provides insurance and other services to track owners. Huth hopes to expand his operation to include a series that will offer a home to the West Coast's NASCAR Elite Division drivers when those series are scrapped by NASCAR at the end of this season.
"The only thing that's similar," says Huth, "is that Ron and I both strongly believe in short-track racing and want to keep it alive." -J.F.B.