By Andrew Clarke
Date posted: 23 October 2025
Australian motorsport has lost one of its greatest characters with overnight passing of Garry Rogers.
Rogers was a successful businessman and a racer to the core who invested heavily in the sport and young talent, he backed his people, and did it all in his own unmistakable way.
He started out behind the wheel himself, cutting laps in touring cars and sports sedans before taking on the banked walls of Calder Park’s Thunderdome in the short-lived AUSCAR and NASCAR eras. Rogers ran stock cars and pushed hard in touring cars when privateers still had a shot, and earned a reputation as a bloke who’d race anything.
He was one of the first Racing Entitlements Contacts (REC) holders in Supercars, and later was a key player in the Australian Racing Group, as well as a shareholder in RACE when it bought Supercars three years ago.
Garry’s real legacy came once he stepped out of the driver’s seat and built Garry Rogers Motorsport. From a modest suburban workshop, GRM grew into one of the most distinctive and enduring teams in the country, known as much for its personality as its results. Rogers’ shed became a proving ground for young drivers who needed someone willing to give them a fair go.
Jamie Whincup got his first proper shot there, Garth Tander found his voice and went on to win the 2000 Bathurst 1000 with Jason Bargwanna in the famous GRM-Valvoline colours, and the list kept growing, Steve Richards, Jason Bright, Lee Holdsworth, Scott McLaughlin, and plenty more. Garry had an eye for talent and a belief that attitude mattered just as much as raw speed. At one stage, three-quarters of the V8 Supercars grid was fed by talent that he had unearthed.
He wasn’t a manager in the modern sense, he was a mentor, a father figure, and sometimes a pain in the backside, but always fair. His blunt humour, his one-liners, and his absolute refusal to play politics made him a paddock favourite. He called things as he saw them, usually with a laugh and always with a point.
Garry Rogers with the Monaro that won the Bathurst 24 Hour race.
As a team owner, he won the Bathurst 1000 and also the Bathurst 24-Hour race in a Monaro he built for Holden and racked up 21 wins in Supercars.
Beyond Supercars, Rogers pushed Australian racing into new territory — taking punts on TCR Australia when others hesitated, and backing S5000 when open-wheel racing needed a heartbeat. Through it all, he did it with the same stubborn passion that made him who he was.
The sport won’t see another quite like Garry Rogers, a builder of cars, a builder of people, and a reminder that motor racing, at its core, should still be about having fun while having a go.
Vale Garry Rogers.
A true original.
Look for more on Garry in Auto Action Premium Magazine on the first Thursday of November.
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