News
The Rise of a TCR Rookie from Debutant to Title Contender
After making his series debut at Sandown Raceway, Ryan Casha has quickly established his TCR credentials with a race victory and a strong claim to the 2024 Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series title fight.
Casha graduated from the Toyota 86 Series, which he won in 2023, and signed up with Garry Rogers Motorsport for the 2024 TCR Australia season. The 20-year-old immediately impressed as he qualified fourth on debut, and scored a podium finish in just his second ever race in the category.
Impressively, Casha has gone on to score a podium at all but one round so far in 2024. A pair of third place finishes at Phillip Island and Tailem Bend followed his Sandown efforts before making the breakthrough for a maiden victory at Queensland Raceway.
“Overall it’s been a really good year, we’ve had some good results so far and now we want to keep this momentum going,” said Casha.
“Coming in (to the year) we didn’t have a huge amount of expectations. I had to adapt to the car and learn the intricacies of the car and TCR as a whole. We’re in a pretty good window now in terms of being in the same boat on setup and feel of the car.”
Working in Casha’s favour has been the wealth of experience to draw upon from his GRM stablemates. Between Aaron Cameron, Jordan Cox and Ben Bargwanna there’s close to 250 races worth of experience, and the trio account for three of the top four spots in the TCR Australia all-time starts department.
“The boys have made it quite easy for me to pull apart their racing and learn what I can from them. I think the calibre of drivers in TCR is quite underrated, the fact you can have the whole field within a second and the racing is so tight.
“I’ve been enjoying it a lot, it’s been an awesome experience. I have a lot of gratitude to Garry, Barry (Rogers) and everyone at Valvoline as well.”
Casha’s consistent performances have earned him sixth in the points standings after five rounds. The Valvoline racer is just three points adrift of teammate Cox for fifth, and 70 points back from series leader Zac Soutar.
With a race win awarding 50 points (35 in Race 2), and the constant threat of a DNF and the accompanying 0 points, Casha is well and truly in the hunt 6 races out from the finale in Bathurst.
“I’m excited, to be sixth in my debut year is pretty cool, it’s promising for us looking forward as well. The plan is to make the most of that momentum (from the race win), and if I can outperform some of the boys in front of me even for a couple of races it could be me in the top three overall.
“We’ve been around the back of the top 10 in qualifying a bit, which is not where we want to be, so that will be super important. SMP is a very fast and flowing track, and from what we saw at Phillip Island that seems to suit the Peugeot.
“I have been studying as much data and onboard footage as I can to hit the ground running and put us in good stead for the weekend,” Casha concluded.
The penultimate round of the 2024 Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series takes place at ColorSpec Race Sydney from October 18-20 as part of the Shannons SpeedSeries.