FORMER Garry Rogers Motorsport racer and now-IndyCar star Scott McLaughlin has opened up further on the passing of his former team boss and friend Garry Rogers.

Rogers passed away on Thursday (October 23) morning.

McLaughlin, who has been back in Australia on holidays in recent weeks during his off-season, told V8 Sleuth this week that without his time at GRM between 2013 and 2016 he would not have had the opportunity to join Team Penske.

“If it wasn’t for my time at GRM, there’s no chance that the Penske stuff happens,” McLaughlin said.

“There was a chance back in the day I could have gone elsewhere before Volvo arrived between 2013 and 2014, but I ultimately decided to stay with Volvo because of Gaz giving me my shot and I felt it was going to be good. I’m so grateful I did.

“He was just a good man. People thought he was eccentric and he was, but he was such a family guy too. He taught me about having a life off track. He’d never get mad at you but always never pump you up. He’d never shoot you down when you had a bad race, but with me he’d never pump me up either.

McLaughlin at the wheel of the GRM Volvo in Tasmania in 2014. Photo: an1images.com / Ross Gibb.

“I’ll always remember in Adelaide when the whole ‘jandal’ thing happened, he basically said, “right sweet, another race tomorrow, we’ve got to be one better tomorrow, see you later on!”

“The engine blew up the next day and we were probably going to win. But he was the same, “alright, let’s get going, we’ll be fine!’ He was the king of glass half full, that’s for sure.”

Despite his decision to leave GRM for DJR Team Penske for 2017, McLaughlin says Rogers never held the move against his former charge.

“Ultimately, the hard thing for Gaz was that all the good guys he put money into, he’d lose out on (getting the return) in the end as they moved on to bigger and better things, but he never held it against us, which was the coolest thing about the bloke,” he said.

“So many good drivers came out of there, he kept us firmly on the ground. I was working on the shop floor until the end of 2014. James Golding was the same.

“I went to Garry about ‘Bieber’ and said he should give James a shot and that he was going to be good. They got talking and James came to work at the workshop and ended up driving. Garry was the king of ‘OK, we’ll give him a shot, if he’s no good, I’ll lose some money’.”

But it wasn’t all great memories, the Kiwi laughs when reminded of Rogers’ dress ups on the team’s annual Bathurst road trip.

“I hated those road trips!” he laughs.

“All I wanted to do was get to the track, but he knew I hated them and that’s why he always got me on them! Poor Robert Dahlgren in the year he was with us (2014), he had no idea what was going on with all the dress ups and stuff!

“Dressing in drag, that was Gazza. He was so funny with that stuff. He loved that, he loved the boys, a beer. Honestly, if it was up to Gaz I could have gone to the pub with him before every race, he was so old school. You either fitted the mould of he and GRM or you didn’t. That’s why people got chewed up and spat out sometimes.”

The 2014 Bathurst GRM sauna had been a secret engineering program in the team’s workshop ahead of its first Great Race with Volvo. Photo: an1images.com / Ross Gibb.

At Bathurst in 2014, GRM’s first year with the Volvo S60 program, a giant box appeared on the grid in front of McLaughlin’s car. Inside the purpose-built sauna was none other than Rogers, wrapped in a towel!

“He had the boys fabricating that thing for three weeks, they kept it hidden for so long because he didn’t want the Volvo reps finding out about it – he’d been planning it for Bathurst all year!” laughs McLaughlin.

“I drive up to the grid and there’s this big box there in front of me, and he’s in there with a towel on – the dude was unreal.”

McLaughlin also paid tribute to Rogers’s son Barry, who has worked closely with his best mate and father for the last decade-plus in the Melbourne-based team.

“His relationship with Baz was just so epic, they were two peas in a pod, rippingly good blokes,” reflects the former Supercars Champion.

“People forget they were competitors for a while as used car salesmen; they did their own things for a while.

“But when I joined GRM (in 2013) was when Barry really started getting involved with GRM and that was such a cool thing to be a part of, with them coming back together and working on the team.

“A lot of the reason why Garry took the next step with Volvo was because of Barry, he’s a big part of my story as much as Garry is as well.”

All cars at this weekend’s Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 are running with GRM tribute decals in honour of Garry Rogers.