99motorsport to go TCR racing

The Supercheap Auto TCR Australia paddock will welcome a new team in 2024 in the form of 99motorsport, which will run Chaz Mostert’s title winning Audi.

The family owned team run by former Super2 driver Marcus LaDelle in Melbourne has grown rapidly over recent years and hopes to run two cars in the rookie campaign.

One of them will be the Audi RS 3 Chaz Mostert steered to the 2021 TCR Australia title, while the sister entry has not been ruled out from appearing in February’s season opener at Sandown.

The ex Mostert car was delivered to 99motorsport by Melbourne Performance Centre on Friday.

LaDelle will be the owner and team manager on race weekends, which means he is on the hunt for two drivers.

99motorpsport started life as single car operation headed by LaDelle in the RX8 Cup Series before joining the Toyota 86 Series in 2022.

This year LaDelle was joined by Mitchell McGarry, Mason Harvey and Shane Nowickyj in an expanded Toyota campaign, but only McGarry raced in the Bathurst finale.

Now in 2024 99motorsport will be in TCR and racing against big manufacturers when the TCR World Tour returns and LaDelle is excited about the opportunity that came from nowhere.

“It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks,” said LaDelle.

“I was actually put on to TCR and the Category Manager Lisa Totani by her brother Matthew, who happens to be our videographer. So that was a pretty unique way to get introduced, and as it turns out TCR fits the bill perfectly for what we planned to run in 2024.

“99 started as a personal pursuit to run my own cars, but it’s now evolved with more of a developmental program through Formula RX8 and Toyota 86. 

“TCR is the next step for those drivers, a great category that’s commercially viable and has great synergy with the market and manufacturer relevance.

“There’s a great opportunity to bring drivers in to TCR and then give them the platform to go race in Europe, and the World Tour running down here only amplifies that.”

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