Rogers reaffirms commitment to Supercars stake

Barry Rogers has reaffirmed his commitment to owning a stake of Supercars’ parent company, despite the recent departure of an Australian Racing Group-aligned figure from its board.

As previously reported, Speedcafe.com learnt that John McMellan had stepped down from the board of Racing Australia Consolidated Enterprises Ltd (RACE) in recent weeks.

McMellan and Rogers are both directors of and shareholders in ARG, with 20 and 75 percent stakes, respectively.

However, the latter says the development regarding the RACE board is unrelated to his and father Garry’s 15 percent shareholding in that company.

“John being on the board has nothing to do with our shareholding,” Barry Rogers told Speedcafe.com.

“Garry and I have got some shareholding in there but it’s our shareholding; it’s got nothing to do with John.

“Brian Boyd had a shareholding which he sold some time ago, so it might have been linked to that, but it’s got nothing to do with our share.”

Asked if he was still committed to owning the 15 percent share, Rogers replied, “We still own it. Nothing’s changed from our end.”

The Rogers had been hopeful that Supercars and ARG would come together in a ‘whole of motorsport’ approach, of which the unfulfillment thus far had clearly disappointed Garry per correspondence he emailed to Supercars team owners last year.

A subsequent email from Garry to teams had the Rogers selling their shares, a position they would walk back from.

Asked today to clarify if there were any plans to sell their RACE stake anytime soon, Barry said, “No, Let’s hope it all grows. That’s what our plan is with it all.

“Look, we invested initially, sure, hoping for the whole of motorsport thing to get together, and obviously that’s not going to happen at the moment but who knows what the future holds?

“Let’s hope that business really kicks along and there’s a dollar to be made out of it, but time will tell, I suppose.”

Barry Rogers also said that the recent split from Supercars Media regarding production of the SpeedSeries coverage which streams live and ad-free on Stan Sport was a business decision, rather than something to do with the lack of the ‘whole of motorsport’ strategy.

“The broadcast decision was really down to economics, to be honest with you,” he remarked.

The Shannons SpeedSeries kicks off for 2023 this weekend with AWC Race Tasmania at Symmons Plains.