Renowned talent spotter and champion of young talent Rogers will be farewelled on Thursday at a funeral service in Melbourne following his death late last month, aged 80.
Among the many drivers to owe their career to Rogers is Tander, who was on the sidelines after winning the Australian Formula Ford Championship in 1997.
Tander received a sudden call-up to GRM midway through the 1998 Australian Touring Car Championship to replace Steven Richards, who took an opportunity in the UK with Nissan.
The recruitment of Tander proved a boon for team and driver as the lanky West Aussie led GRM to a Bathurst victory in 2000, when he also finished runner-up in the championship.
“If it wasn’t for Garry Rogers, I wouldn’t be a Supercar driver at all, let alone having any sort of success,” Tander said on a Rogers tribute episode of the Rusty’s Garage podcast.
“Literally, I had no options as a kid that just won the Formula Ford Championship, spent all the money that Mum and Dad had, exhausted all the sponsorship that we could gather.
“That was it. I was done. So, if it wasn’t for Garry, then this phase of my life, that direction in my life would not have happened.”
Tander left GRM at the end of 2004 and returned 12 years later. His career as a full-time driver came to a sudden end when a sponsorship shortfall meant he was cut from the squad in 2019.
Landing on his feet as a co-driver at Triple Eight, Tander switched to Grove Racing in 2023 in a multi-faceted role that includes acting as an advisor.
Grove Racing has steadily grown into a Supercars powerhouse, with current drivers Matt Payne and Kai Allen both qualifying for next weekend’s Sandown Semi-Final.
Tander said his own early career experience at GRM proved inspiration when discussing the possibility of recruiting Allen for 2025.
“In my role at Grove Racing, where I help with the direction of the race team with Stephen Grove and Brenton Grove, we were looking at driver options for this year,” he said.
“When Kai Allen became an option, I was like, ‘wow, we’re going to have two kids. We’re going to have a Matt Payne, who was 22 at the time, and we’re going to have a 19-year-old’.
“I said to Stephen and Brenton, I remember way back when I started at GRM, we had Jason Bargwanna and myself.
“No one believed in youth at that stage, and we built something pretty cool. That was way back in the early 2000s, and I think we can do the same today.
“I was inspired from what Garry did with us way back then. That gave me the confidence that we could do what we needed to do with two young drivers today, and it seems to be working out OK.
“I never got the opportunity to tell Garry that, but that’s something that sticks with me today, the opportunity for young drivers. He proved that all the way through the lifetime of GRM.”
Check out the latest Rusty’s Garage podcast for the full tribute to Rogers, featuring Tander, Richards, James Moffat, Lee Holdsworth, Aaron Cameron, Scott McLaughlin, James Golding and more.
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