The new ownership team consists of existing AASA CEO Stephen Whyte, alongside Les Smith, Michael Fitzgerald and Peter Washington.
Negotiations between the group and the Benalla Auto Club began in March 2025 and were finalised at the start of this year.
The BAC took ownership of the AASA in 2003, starting off solely in grassroots motorsport, and growing into running successful national championships such as the Hi-Tec Oils Super Series.
As a result of the sale, the BAC can turn its focus solely to running Winton Motor Raceway.
Two-time Supercars champion Marcos Ambrose will remain in place as the motorsport competition and commercial director, while Whyte will continue as CEO.
Whyte issued a statement covering details of the sale, addressing stakeholders and competitors covering key details.
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“This is a fantastic development for motorsport in general in Australia,” said Whyte.
“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.”
View the full announcement from AASA below.
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