GARRY Rogers Motorsport insists its brand-new Peugeot TCR cars will debut this year, despite recurring delays.
Appointed to design and build Peugeot’s next-generation 308 TCR model, GRM initially hoped demonstration laps would be possible at the 2023 Bathurst International.
When that didn’t happen, it then had targeted a rollout of its full four-car fleet at Round 4 of the 2024 SpeedSeries at The Bend on May 31 to June 2.
That’s not going to happen either, but GRM director Barry Rogers did provide a more definitive update via the most recent episode of the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Castrol.
“We’ve got a couple of shells complete, as in cages in from parts from Peugeot,” he told host Aaron Noonan.
“Initially if you said at the start of the year, ‘when was the plan to launch them?’ The plan was the Tailem Bend round.
“You don’t want to blame world supply of things but I tell you, getting things out of Europe at the moment, everything, if you think it’s going to take six weeks, it ends up taking 12 or 14 or 15 weeks.
“But we will have at least two cars on the track this year.”
That could make for a tricky decision as to which of its drivers gets first crack at the upgraded machinery, with Ben Bargwanna, Aaron Cameron, Jordan Cox and Ryan Casha all on its books.
“They’ll all be keen to get in the new car,” Rogers continued.
“Engine-wise and things it’s pretty much retaining what we have got in the current car.
“Obviously it’s a complete new body shape and we’re pretty confident we’ve found some improvement there.
“We’ve had the engines out on Todd Kelly’s dyno in recent times – even though it’s the current engine, just some new mapping and things going on there.
“So we think we’ll have a pretty sharp car.”
The next episode of the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Castrol, featuring an accomplished driver, is due to drop today.
