Statement of fact regarding Australian Super Tin Tops leaving AASA – Marcos Ambrose

It comes with great disappointment that Australian Super Tin Tops (Aussie TT) have announced their intention to compete with a different sanctioning body for 2026. This does not need to be the case or exclusive either, as we at AASA invite and hope the series will race with us again in the future. In fact, we invite Aussie TT to join us for Round 1 of the AASA TT grid March 13 – 14 at The Bend.

We did not create AASA TT to replace or add a category.

We formed AASA TT to hold a grid for our grass roots racers so they can race at both the Super Series and the new for 2026 AASA Nationals series events.

It is vital for AASA to protect and support grass roots racers and give them the same opportunity to race as any other.

AASA TT welcomes all competitors and categories to race with us, including Aussie Tin Tops.

Aussie TT struggled to find a way forward to secure a grid with the new Super Series formats and business model that was presented, which had identical terms and formats as every other support category and was presented at an identical day / time. Every category has been treated equally. No category has had special privilege or entitlements – nor will they.

Accommodations were made to support Aussie TT to secure their grid, but we could not offer special deals to one category and not the others on principle. That would not be fair to all the other categories and competitors who have already committed to racing with us in 2026.

Running a national race meeting with live television is expensive and unfortunately a fair amount of that money is sourced via competitor entry fees. At AASA, we hope to break that model in time, but for 2026 we have done the best we can to reduce the costs to the competitor whilst making the race event viable and a better spectator product.

There are some factual errors from various sources that AASA would like to clarify:

1 – All categories are treated equally on price and extras. Some categories choose to buy more tv, track time and garages as part of their package.

2 – No category will be treated less than another or be sent home or have races cut. That has never been discussed and will never happen.

3 – Two day formats are a major part of AASA national racing in 2026. The new Super Series formats and model is based around categories predominately doing two day shows including TA2.

4 - We agreed to work with Aussie TT on formats and schedule – that discussion was ongoing until they announced their intention to race under another sanctioning body. Two options Fri/ Sat or Sat/Sun – both were discussed with Aussie TT – that was made clear.

5 – With cost a consideration for Aussie TT we offered them Feature Category Status on the AASA Nationals card to complement the Super Series appearances. This would come with Garages and a reduced cost. This gave them 10 options to race on a national platform.

6 – The TV package offered to Aussie TT was the same as every other support category. Our promise to all support categories is a minimum 20% of racing on live TV and 80% on Live Streaming. Hopefully, we can give our competitors more than that, but until schedules are locked in closer to each event it is impossible to know due to lots of varied race formats and categories at each event. With up to 27 hours of track time at each event and only 8 hours of live TV it is easy to see the issue.

7 – We secured a grid spot for grassroots racers by announcing AASA TT. We have not added, nor kicked off or stolen a grid from another category. We welcome Aussie TT to take this grid if they would like. AASA have committed to the financial risk to ensure our competitors have somewhere to race in 2026.

8 – AASA TT have only taken these steps once Aussie TT announced their intentions to race with MA in 2026.

9 – We welcome Aussie TT to re-open discussions for 2026 or any time in the future.

Having dialogue like this on social platforms is unhelpful to motorsport and our competitors. The world is political enough – let’s try and move motorsport away from the politics and get back to what’s important, which is enjoying the sport and racing hard.

We will be providing more information in regards to the Hi-Tec Oils Super Series in coming days.