Cody Burcher reflects on his maiden Turtle Wax Trans Am Series

So it's no wonder that with a small team behind him, Orange-based racer Cody Burcher is ticking off some significant goals.

Essentially the team behind the 19-year-old are himself, his father Shane and a close family friend.

A jack of all trades, Cody's the man behind the wheel along with being on the tools and managing the books, an area of the business he's well qualified in as an accountant.

Coming into 2022, Burcher had significant experience in motorsport, but this year was his rookie season in the Turtle Wax Trans Am Series.

With plenty of ups and downs, it's one he's taken a lot of lessons from.

"It's been an eventful, massive learning year," he said.

"The biggest challenge was starting it - we bought the car a week before it had to be on the boat to go to Tasmania for the first round, went down to Melbourne, picked it up, brought it home, and got it to where it needed to be.

"We put it back on the trailer and luckily enough my grandfather was able to get it down to the boat for the first round - the timeline was very tight."

Having only one test run all season, Burcher was still able to produce a stunning start to his maiden campaign.

A fifth in the opening round at Tasmania came his way before grabbing podium at Phillip Island in the second effort.

Unfortunately for Burcher, a combination of clutch problems and issues out of his control hampered his chances for quality finishes at Bathurst, Eastern Creek and Ipswich.

Despite the setbacks, Burcher saved his best for last at Sandown, achieving his maiden pole position in the championship - just rewards for all his hard work.

"We came down swinging at Sandown ... it was cool to see all the effort we put in come off," he said.

"I was confident in the speed we had but at the same time didn't expect it (pole position).

"When I saw that lap pop up I was pretty bloody happy to say the least. I worked very hard on myself in between rounds to work on those weaknesses and mistakes we had before and the team put a lot of effort into making it happen.

"We got the monkey off the back to show what we can do, we just had to knuckle down and put it all together."

Overall, Burcher's debut campaign saw him place 10^th, a significant achievement for someone who swapped from a Sedan to Ford Mustang with limited preparation before the Tasmania opener.

"It's been a completely different style of car to drive ... if you could find two polar opposite race cars, these are the two," he laughed.

"Every car has its characteristics, and I went from one extreme to the other in driving styles but took the challenge on and even in the first round we proved what we could do."

While the competitive season for Trans Am has ended, Burcher will head to Bathurst in November for a final exhibition in an invitational, non-championship round.

As expected, Burcher's keen to make amends for the failures that happened at Mt Panorama earlier on.

"It'll be good to race there again in front of a home crowd," he said.

"I'm keen to have another crack at it."