12/21/2016
NSTA Top Speed Modified Tour
John Robbins Carries On A Family Tradition
This article originally appeared on Speed Sport online, read it here: John Robbins Carries On A Family Tradition
INDIANAPOLIS — John Robbins grew up around short-track racing and in recent years he’s used his National Short Track Alliance to help grow the sport he loves.
Now Robbins will be taking his passion for short-track racing a little further as he has purchased the ICAR Top Speed Modified Tour and will begin promoting it this season as the NSTA Top Speed Modified Tour.
If the name Robbins seems familiar to the short track world, it should. The 34-year-old Robbins is the nephew of Rex and Becky Robbins, who founded the American Speed Ass’n and operated the successful short-track racing sanctioning body for several decades.
“I never had the desire to jump in a race car. I fell in love with the business of the sport watching Rex and Becky. I got to be a fly on the wall for a lot of years — seeing this business from behind the scenes,” Robbins told SPEED SPORT. “From a very young age, I always dreamed of following in my uncle’s footsteps. To have this opportunity now is a dream come true.”
After growing up around short-track racing, Robbins went to Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. The original concept for the NSTA was born as part of a class project. Since then he’s worked with numerous startup companies before returning to motorsports.
“I’ve wanted to get into racing since I was 12 and over the last two years that desire has gotten stronger,” said Robbins, who purchased the series from Dave Muzzillo, who also operates Indiana’s Baer Field Motorsports Park. “I have heard all the talk about short-track racing, and how there are no fans, no cars, no sponsors and no future. I kept looking around and seeing things that told me that wasn’t true and that we really just needed to take a different approach. The whole mission of the National Short Track Alliance is to help support, preserve and grow short-track racing in America.
“We work with a lot of tracks and sanctioning bodies, but I felt like if I was going to tell them how to do their job I should be right there in the trenches with them, which is why I acquired the series.”
Robbins is a fan of modified racing and has watched the NSTA Top Speed Modified Series, which debuted in 1989, since he was a youngster.
“It goes back to modified racing being so exciting and under appreciated,” Robbins said of the reason he purchased the series. “I remember watching what at the time was the ICAR Jasper Modified Tour and USA Modified Tour at Anderson Speedway. It was always great racing. My first racing business plan, when I was 17, included this series in it. So I’ve really loved this type of racing for a long time.
John Robbins
"When you look at the future of modified racing in the Midwest, there is so much opportunity,” Robbins noted. “It’s easy to get into modified racing as a driver. The cars haven’t changed a lot in the last 20 years. The races are the perfect length for today’s race fan. These cars look different than what people are used to seeing. There’s a ton of upside and I have a vision for where this can go, it’s pretty exciting.”
It’s his passion for short-track racing that brought Robbins back to the racing industry.
“One of the things that stands out to me is all those years growing up around Rex, I always told Rex I wanted to be in the racing industry,” Robbins said. “He used to look at me and say: ‘John, racing is a hell of a way to make a living.’
“What is funny about that now is I have been out in the corporate world, I’ve learned that anything worth doing is a hell of a way to make a living,” Robbins added. “You might as well enjoy what you do. If you have a passion for it, that’s what matters.”
Robbins sees the similarities between the way his late uncle started ASA so many years ago and his new involvement with the NSTA Top Speed Modified Tour.
“ASA really started as a sprint car series, he was promoting sprint car racing at Anderson Speedway, and here I am with an open wheel series. I think that is cool,” Robbins said. “I think back to what he did and what he understood about promotion and making stars out of drivers, trying to have rivalries among drivers and tracks and creating a story for your series.
“One of the challenges short-track racing has is that the rules are so fragmented. Everyone has different rules, but the cars kind of look the same. A guy can’t go from race track-A to race track-B to race track-C so easily,” he explained. “How do we get back to standardizing the rules, so that we can have local heroes and build them into regional and national stars? I love that this is grassroots racing and that is where ASA started and that’s where I am going to start.
“As I look at these parallels, one thing that stands out is that our first race will be at Lucas Oil Raceway next April and Travis Eddy will be racing,” Robbins noted. “I think about how all of this has come together. Next year there will be a Robbins running a driver’s meeting and an Eddy sitting there giving him a hard time. It’s all come full circle.”
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Article Credit: John Robbins
Submitted By: John Robbins
