A HUGE chapter of Australian motorsport has closed with the passing of legendary former driver and long-time race team owner Garry Rogers.
The Supercars Hall of Famer passed away this morning in the early hours.
He was 80 years of age.
Documenting all of the elements of Rogers’ life in one tribute piece is simply impossible – he was an amazing whirlwind of energy and positivity.
A legendary figure of the sport always up for a joke and a laugh, Rogers has been involved in Australian motorsport for more than 60 years, investing millions of dollars in drivers, cars, teams and categories and providing opportunities for young drivers and staff to learn, grow and thrive.
Adored for his quirky personality and relentlessly positive attitude, he and his Garry Rogers Motorsport team have been renowned for finding and fostering young talent into giants of the sport.
He gave many of the sport’s best their starts in Supercars including Garth Tander, Jamie Whincup, Jason Bargwanna, Scott McLaughlin and Lee Holdsworth.
Rogers with Scott McLaughlin during his team’s Volvo era. Photo: an1images.com / Ross Gibb.
Only as recently as a few weeks ago, ex-GRM drivers Tander, Holdsworth and James Golding all stood on the podium at the Repco Bathurst 1000.
A long-time racer himself, Rogers drove Sports Sedans during the 1960s and 1970s and later began racing Toranas as a privateer in the Australian Touring Car Championship.
He made 14 Bathurst 1000 starts between 1978 and 1993, including five appearances in the Top 10 Shootout then famously known as ‘Hardies Heroes’.
Garry’s best finish at Bathurst ironically came in 1981, the year he was involved in the huge multi-car accident at the top of Mount Panorama that stopped the race.
He and Clive Benson-Brown were classified fourth in that year’s Great Race, though Garry was carted away on a stretcher.
“The car was concertinaed,” Benson-Brown said in 2006 of the crash.
“I drove Garry back home the next day. He had problems seeing because of the blood behind his eyes and he had bruises on his chest from the seatbelts, so certainly he was going fast when he hit.”
Rogers at the helm of his Ford Escort at Calder. Photo: an1images.com / AUTOPIX.
Over the next period Garry combined driving and car dealerships, before focusing on running the team from the mid 1990s onwards and stepping away from behind the steering wheel.
In 1996 his team entered the Australian Touring Car Championship with an ex-Gibson Motorsport Commodore for Steve Richards to drive after successful stints in production cars, AUSCAR and Super Touring.
For two years – in 1996 and 1997 – the team ran both a V8 and Super Touring program with Richards at the wheel of a Commodore, as well as a Honda Accord, then a Nissan Primera.
From there the Melbourne-based squad became a part of the furniture of the V8 Supercars, and later, Supercars, pit lane and paddock. It expanded to two cars in 1998 with the arrival of Jason Bargwanna alongside Richards, before he left to take up a Nissan British Touring Car Championship test driver role and, in his place, came Garth Tander.
Rogers’ team won ‘The Great Race’ at Bathurst in 2000 with Tander and Bargwanna at the wheel and that same year Tander achieved the team’s best V8 Supercars Championship finish as runner-up to eventual champ Mark Skaife.
GRM was then entrusted by Holden to build and operate the Nations Cup Holden Monaro program that won the inaugural Bathurst 24 Hour in 2002 and backed it up with a 1-2 finish the following year.
He told V8 Sleuth in 2020 that the 24 Hour victory was a clear standout in his motorsport career.
Rogers with the 2002 Bathurst 24 Hour winning crew of Nathan Pretty, Cam McConville, Garth Tander and Steve Richards. Photo: an1images.com / Dirk Klynsmith.
“When we won Bathurst in 2000 it was great but that 24 Hour race, particularly the second one where we therefore won it two years in a row, is by far and away the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done,” Rogers said.
Rogers served as a board member of TEGA (Touringcar Entrants Group of Australia) and he and son Barry were later involved with ARG (the Australian Racing Group) and threw themselves into building and racing S5000 open wheelers and racing in and administering the TCR Australia and Trans Am Series.
GRM withdrew from Supercars racing at the end of 2019, though made a one-off return with a wildcard Commodore at Bathurst in 2020 driven by recent PremiAir signing Jayden Ojeda and Tyler Everingham.
Rogers was inducted into the Supercars Hall of Fame in 2015.
His team will race on in his honour in the next Trico Trans Am Series’ round at Mallala on November 21/22 ahead of the bp Adelaide Grand Final the following weekend where the Trans Am crown will be decided.
V8 Sleuth passes on its sincerest of condolences to Garry’s family, his friends and fans and all at Garry Rogers Motorsport.
He will forever be one-of-a-kind.
At Queensland Raceway in 2015 a range of Rogers’ former cars and drivers were on hand for a special parade for his 70th birthday. Photo: an1images.com / Ross Gibb.
