GARTH Tander has announced his retirement from Supercars racing, effective immediately.
The 48-year-old, six-time Bathurst 1000 winner leaves the driver’s seat on a high, having added his most recent Great Race win to his tally last month.
“I’m not sure you could go out on a higher high than winning that race, particularly this year’s edition of Bathurst’,” Tander said in a pre-filmed package shown in the Sandown 500 broadcast.
“Even when I went to Bathurst this year, even before the cars had even ran, I basically went as though ‘I’m enjoying this as if it’s my last one.
“So I took every aspect of it as if you’re enjoying it for the last time. I hadn’t fully made my mind up at that point but it was great to have the kids there, to have Sian my partner there, to enjoy that moment.
“And then obviously when we won, it was like, ‘this is quite cool’. It was a nice, fitting way to say ‘that’s it, done and dusted’.
“I never fully made the final decision until a week or two after Bathurst.
It has been widely speculated that the 2025 enduro campaign would be his last ahead of moving into a full-time Supercars broadcast commentary role alongside his behind-the-scenes duties at Grove Racing, where he will now move into the formal role of Team and Driver Advisor.
Tander ends his career second on the all-time list of round starts with 294 to his name over a span of 28 seasons, beginning with his mid-season call up to race for Garry Rogers Motorsport in 1998.
Bargwanna and Tander won th 2000 for GRM. Photo: an1images.com / Graeme Neander.
He raced full-time in the championship for the next two decades, winning the title in 2007, collecting 54 of his 58 career race wins, including Bathurst 1000 victories in 2000, 2009 and 2011, an Adelaide 500 overall win in 2000 and 30 pole positions.
Those full-time successes all came aboard Holden machinery, with Tander piloting Commodores for GRM, the HSV Dealer Team and Holden Racing Team.
His full-time career ended abruptly at the end of the 2018 season, when the arrival of Boost Mobile sponsorship led to an unexpected end to his second stint at GRM.
But his second chapter was a belter; he was immediately recruited as a co-driver by Triple Eight, partnering with Shane van Gisbergen to win a pair of Bathurst 1000s in 2020 and 2022.
But he elected to leave the decorated squad following that last triumph, instead electing to partner with Grove Racing to help usher through a new generation of talent and build a new dynasty.
That work has begun to bear fruit, with Tander’s final career victory coming alongside Kiwi young gun Matt Payne in this year’s edition of the Great Race.