Krista Kelley
Krista Kelley

‘It’s supposed to be fun’: MAVTV’s new ARCA Menards Series booth brings fresh approach to storytelling

www.arcaracing.com March 10, 2022

MAVTV Motorsports Network’s new ARCA Menards Series broadcast team has the feel of a band getting back together.

Which is notable considering this band has never played a single note together, and its lead singer is holding the microphone for the first time.

That lead singer is Krista Kelley, formerly known as Krista Voda. She has been married for 12 years, but the break between her previous role at NBC Sports and this gig with MAVTV finally allowed her a chance to rebrand herself professionally. On this year’s ARCA broadcasts, she will be MAVTV’s first female play-by-play announcer for live programming.

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The team also features Jim Tretow as lead analyst. An authority on all things auto racing, particularly the ARCA Menards platform, he returns for his third year calling these races on MAVTV.

Kelley and Tretow in the booth will be joined by Mike Massaro on pit road. A veteran in the NASCAR broadcasting world, Massaro stepped away from the business in 2016 for personal and health reasons. For the last three years, he has been and will continue to be a news reporter and weekend anchor at NBC Connecticut in Hartford, but racing’s gravitational pull brings Massaro back to the track on a part-time basis for this pit-reporting role.

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This band may be new, but even in its infancy, two clear themes emerge in terms of what viewers can expect. The group will excel in its storytelling, and it will have fun doing so.

“I think I’m a little weird and quirky,” Kelley told NASCAR.com with a laugh. “And that’s what I hope to bring to the broadcast. I don’t want to pretend I know what’s happening under the hood — that’s why you have Mike Massaro and Jim Tretow. I just hope you get to have a little fun watching.”

Added Tretow of Kelley’s preparation for her new role: “She’s been having a lot of fun. I really enjoy that approach. We’re going to have a lot of fun this year.”

Massaro, who worked alongside Kelley when both served as pit reporters for NBC, echoed the sentiment.

“Just thrilled to work with Krista again,” he said. “She is an amazing talent. She is so fluid with her words, poetic at times. She’s fun. She’s personable. She’s going to be great.

“And I’m really looking forward to (working with Tretow). I know he knows everything there is to know about ARCA, so I am going to lean on him very heavily at times. He’s an authority. I know there’s going to be a lot of backstory that I still need to learn that he already knows.”

Bob Dillner, last year’s lap-by-lap caller on MAVTV’s ARCA Menards Series broadcasts who stepped out of the booth to take an administrative role with the network, had a heavy hand in adding Kelley and Massaro to the team. He and Kelley had known each other for years and recently worked together on a project for the network, but she still was surprised — and certainly delighted — to receive the offer.

Massaro also said Dillner’s call came as a surprise. But given where he stood in his professional career, his acceptance came quickly.

“If I’m being honest, I did regret it,” Massaro said of his decision to leave NBC Sports in 2016. “I didn’t know (MAVTV was) looking. I’m fully committed to my job. Bob called and offered, and it didn’t take long for me to realize this would be a great opportunity to get back to the race track and live that part of my life that I miss so much. So many people I haven’t seen in five years. Just rekindling that part of my life to a certain degree.

“It’s going to do a lot for me mentally. That job is a lot more fun than covering news. News is heartbreaking on so many levels. To get back to doing racing, which is for the most part fun. It’s supposed to be fun.”

Massaro’s storytelling chops speak for themselves considering he has been reporting on motorsports in some capacity since the late 1990s on ESPN and NBC. His passion for racing is the result of his growing up around Modified competition at Stafford Motor Speedway in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, where he received his first jobs out of college as public address announcer and public relations director.

Some of Massaro’s earliest and best memories are from the race track. That includes his eighth birthday, when his dad rigged a drawing so he could win a lap around the track at Stafford. The public address announcer who interviewed the 8-year-old Massaro in front of the crowd before his ride-along lap was Mike Joy.

Kelley does not have that personal history with racing. Her family facilitated a passion for all sports, and she played volleyball and basketball while running track through high school. Her motorsports involvement arrived in 2002, when she accepted a NASCAR-focused news position in Lexington, Kentucky. She then became the host of Totally NASCAR on Fox Sports Net in 2003, and her career in motorsports blossomed from there with positions at FOX and NBC.

 

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Kelley has spent time calling action from a booth; she did so for a handful of practice and qualifying sessions at NBC. But she has never called play-by-play for live race action like she will with MAVTV in 2022. That’s not impacting her optimism.

“I do think it lends to my skills even more than pit reporting,” Kelley said. “I was a pit reporter with FOX for several years. As much as I loved it, and loved the action, pit reporting is hard. All of the pit reporters are the best at what they do, because they have 15 seconds to tell a story. I like steering the conversation, being able to lend my contribution that way.

“I need to lean on everyone around me. It is a different skill set. Just the way you prepare; I’m going to be doing different things than I did as a pit reporter.”

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The relationship between Kelley and Tretow is a friendly one that goes back decades. Massaro and Tretow will be working together for the first time, though the two know each other from interactions at the race track.

Tretow said he has admired Massaro’s work from a distance for years. He touted his new teammate’s storytelling on top of his experience and obvious reporting talent.

That nod to storytelling, specifically, is not lost.

“I think that’s something Krista has, Mike has and I have, and it’s going to be a strong component for this,” Tretow explained. “(We’re) naturally inquisitive. Meaning (we) need to know more.

“We’re going to tell this story.”