New era for the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance
Stephen Whyte, AASA CEO
The Australian Auto-Sport Alliance (AASA) has been sold to a new investment group, ending a successful two-decade long partnership between the Benalla Auto Club and the AASA.
The new investment group took ownership of the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance at the start of 2026.
The new ownership team consists of Les Smith, Michael FitzGerald, Peter Washington and Stephen Whyte.
Negotiations between the group and the Benalla Auto Club commenced in March of 2025 and was finalised at the start of the year.
The Benalla Auto Club purchased the Australian-Autosport Alliance back in 2003 and has owned it ever since.
The two parties have grown together as an affordable motorsport alternative over that period, starting off in solely grass roots motorsport the AASA has expanded into national championships on both tarmac and dirt, including the very successful Hi-Tec Oils Super Series.
As a result of this announcement, the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance (AASA) has moved out of the Winton Motor Raceway precinct and will relocate into a new location in the Melbourne CBD in coming weeks.
Nothing changes with the new ownership at the helm of the AASA; with Stephen Whyte remaining as the AASA CEO and Marcos Ambrose the Motorsport Competition and Commercial Director. New appointments will be announced in time.
The new ownership will allow the sanctioning body to grow and expand into new areas of Motorsport.
This also allows the Benalla Auto Club to focus solely on Winton Motor Raceway and will see the country Victorian venue blossom.
Australian Auto-Sport Alliance CEO – Stephen Whyte
“This is a fantastic development for motorsport in general in Australia.
Today, we're able to announce that an investment group has entered into an agreement with the Benalla Auto Club committee to purchase the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance (AASA).
It means that the motorsport world is going to have plenty of opportunity to deal with the AASA as we will be moving away from Winton. We'll be relocating to a more central position in Melbourne.
It's a fantastic opportunity to grow the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance, obviously due to the hard work and the foresight of the Benalla Auto Club committee.
It'll allow the team at Winton Motor Raceway to shine. They're going to have an opportunity to grow throughout the sport and allows them some freedom, and it’ll give the AASA the ability to able to travel to various tracks and customers at a moment’s notice.
This has come about through the fact the AASA has grown at a rate of knots. It's a really positive move for all the motorsport community, and it allows us to then go away and resource as many people as we can, and we'll have some further announcements later in the week.
We just felt it was really important for the general public, our industry competitors, and all our stakeholders to know that we've got the security of AASA secured and it's going to be here for a long time to come.
The investment group is made up of motorsport people, people that have been around the sport for a long time, and it's all about the future of working together with the competitor group and the various stakeholders that we have.
I’d really like to thank Benalla Auto Club guys and girls for giving us an opportunity to do this.
They will absolutely flourish in the environment they're going to be in and the management group will do a great job. We're also diversifying into parts of the sport, like speedway and off-road and karting, all those things that we haven't been able to do previously.”
