Marty Steudler

Martin "Marty" Steudler (born January 5, 1948) is a American racing driver from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. He made sporadic appearances in the TM Master Cup Series in the 70's and early 80's, mainly for his own team, Steudler Racing. While famous in the Northeast region for his prowess on a dirt oval, he is also known as the uncle of current TM Master Cup series driver Scott Steudler. He is planning to make a return to the series for select appearances in the 2013 season.

Early life
Marty Steudler in his young life had been a huge racing enthusiast, going to races with his family around the Southeast Pennsylvania region. Having worked on many cars in his youth, he first entered in dirt track races around the region, especially at Lincoln Speedway at the young age of 13. Almost immediately, Marty showed a great aptitude to racing, and by the time he turned 21 years old, he had won numerous championships in the Northeast region, and had reported to already have won over 150 races. His great skill would get many people to convince him to drive in higher series. However, with the TM Master Cup series having its stronghold in the Midwest, and the ASCC in the Southeast, it made opportunities few and far between.

TM Master Cup and ASCC career
In 1973, with the TM Master Cup schedule planning on making a visit to Pennsylvania for the first time in several years, Marty had been able to wrangle together funds and a race car to race at the first stock car race to be held at Pocono Raceway. While he qualified for the event, he had a poor race, as he was slow off the get go, and eventually blew a motor and fell out of the race. Over the years, Marty would prepare cars to race whenever the TM Master Cup series would visit the Northeast. While he would provide decent results at times, even scoring Top 10's here and there, he would not usually garner enough attention to score a full time ride in the series.

In 1975, Marty would however land a shot at a chance for a full time ride in the ASCC. However, Marty even being a known dirt track racer from Pennsylvania, felt after two races in the ASCC that he was looked down upon as a "Yankee" who was taking a ride from a "Good ol' Southern Boy", and left soon after. To this day, Marty has not said many good things about the ASCC, saying that it was an atmosphere that, while good for the South, was one that an outsider could NEVER survive in.

After a bad taste in his mouth that was the ASCC, Marty would continue to make part time appearances in the TM Master Cup series, recording a high water mark of 8 races in the 1980 season, including a surprise 2nd place finish at the 1980 Round of Atlanta, only running out of fuel going to the checkers, and being passed by Benny Dwyer coming down the front straight. Afterwords, feeling that no TM Master Cup series team would offer him a reasonable ride, despite being known for keeping his car out of trouble (of the 12 times he would score a DNF, only once was it due to an accident), he would scale back his attempts and races in the series until 1985, when he would only make two appearances, with the 1985 Round of Decatur being the last sighting of him racing a TM Master Cup series race. He would, however, continue to race throughout the Northeast, winning races and championships at an amazing clip. He would also start a home improvement business with high school friend Jimmy Madaway, M&J Home Improvement, a business to this day is quite successful in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The training of a TM Master Cup regular
In 1993, Marty had noticed that his nephew Scott Steudler had taken a great interest in racing. With his 3 daughters and 2 sons not taking much of an interest in racing, Marty then decided to train the young Scott to become a racer. In 2005, after a pretty successful start to his career, Marty created a TM Lights team for Scott. While Scott and the team did not win any races in two years, he would prove successful enough, especially with a 4th place points finish in 2006, to attract the attention his uncle never got in the TM Master Cup series, eventually landing a ride for Hodges-Walter Racing, and their new #26 car. Marty contemplated continuing the operation, even thinking about racing the car himself, but had decided that he had other deals, not to mention the team was created for the sole purpose of helping Scott eventually make it to a top series. Marty would sell the assets of the team, and continue to run his business, and make racing appearances in the Northeast.

The Return
Early in 2013, it was reported that Scott had sold the assets of his race team that was a few TM Master Cup ready race cars and equipment to his uncle, with Marty's intent to make one last return to the series. It is reported that he will at least run the one-off races, and if approved, will race for the Independent's Trophy, making him one of the oldest competitors to attempt to run in the series. He was eventually put in two races as a promoters option, and attempted to qualify for Karjala (in his words, his first race outside the North American continent) and Indianapolis, without much success. After the season was done, he made a statement that he would attempt to possibly run as a promoters option for Karjala again, saying that racing at the track, even if he did not qualify, was a fun experience, and early in 2014, was reported to be taking road course racing very seriously to try and make a good attempt at making the field for Karjala, though nothing concrete had been set yet for actually running at Karjala.