GARRY Rogers Motorsport has put itself on the map beyond Australian shores via a bumper deal with Peugeot.
As of next year, GRM will become the exclusive provider of a new Peugeot 308 TCR car to be raced around the world.
The Bathurst 1000-winning team started out in TCR aligned with Alfa Romeo and Renault but has gradually shifted to the point where all four of its fleet in the 2023 season-opener on the weekend were Peugeots.
GRM will kick off its arrangement with the French manufacturer by building at least 10 cars.
“Initially with a program like this, you’ve got to produce 10 from the start,” GRM director told the Wide World of Sports.
“We’ve got a production line at work and a fair bit of design work to do now.
“We’ll be really keen to have these cars released at the start of the 2024 season.
“The pressure from Peugeot isn’t for them to necessarily be ready for the start of the season, but internally we’d love to aim for that date, on track at Race Tasmania, this time next year.
“We’ll get our heads down, bums up and into it.”
Speaking further to how the opportunity has come to be, Rogers noted: “Our relationship started back in 2020, Peugeot wanted to bring a car across to Australia and bring a French driver at the time.
“We ran one at Tailem Bend for them back then. From there, we came to an arrangement with Peugeot Sport in France to bring five Peugeots to Australia, the current 308s that we’re racing.
“We’ve had a great relationship over the last couple of years with Peugeot in-house at GRM and have had the ability to produce some of the homologated components for those cars, which has certainly helped our racing program with the Peugeots here.
“Through the relationship with Peugeot Sport, the opportunity came first with the hybrid 308s road car being released in Australia and TCR going hybrid globally in 2024, we’ve got that opportunity to integrate that hybrid system into the car.
“So we’ve been doing some R&D development at work and that’s developed now into the fact that Peugeot has tasked us with homologating a whole new 308 for the 2024 season based on the road car that has just been released this year.
“It’s a really exciting program at GRM to build a global car.
“Obviously, we’ve had some experience over the years, most recently with the Volvo in Supercars, but building a car that’s going to be racing around the world in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa is something we’re really excited to be doing.”
