A PIVOTAL test that provided a better understanding of the Gen3 Mustang package is behind Grove Racing’s impressive in-season resurgence.
It has been a rollercoaster year for the Braeside squad, which has continued to build off-track while experiencing up-and-down results on-track.
After three rounds this year, Grove was third in the teams’ championship and Ford’s top outfit. It averaged 312.67 points per event from its two cars across Newcastle, Albert Park and Perth.
It proceeded to nosedive from there, averaging just 178.75 points in a four-round stretch spanning Symmons Plains, Hidden Valley, Townsville and Sydney Motorsport Park – which left it 10th in the teams’ standings.
And then all of a sudden, the last three rounds it has shone once more (averaging 296.67), being in the podium hunt at The Bend before flying the Ford flag in the Sandown and Bathurst enduros.
Matt Payne/Kevin Estre were the lead Mustang duo at the Sandown 500 in sixth, and teammates David Reynolds/Garth Tander might have bettered that if not for a mechanical failure.
There was also a sense of what might have been for Car #26 at Bathurst, after fighting back from a controversial drive-through penalty to finish a fine fifth, made possible by a superb pair of 31-lap stints to the end by Reynolds.
So, what has changed to get things back on track?
“We had a really good test prior to Tailem Bend and that enabled us to unlock a couple of things that we needed to do in a test environment that’s hard to do at a race meeting,” Tander told V8 Sleuth.
“The team planned really well for that test prior to The Bend and we got really good solid information about the car that enabled us to understand the package better; from that point on, the car has really been quite strong.”
That’s seemed to have put the Penrite team on the front foot a lot more.
“Every time we have arrived at The Bend, Sandown and (Bathurst), we have just been fast straight away,” Payne told V8 Sleuth.
“We have worked hard on our set-ups in between the rounds to make sure we’re coming to the track with the right car set-up and it’s been working for us.
“We seem to roll out quick and we can kind of carry that speed over the whole weekend and try to improve the car a little bit.
“It’s good to have strong pace at three rounds in a row and I think the next one at Gold Coast is going to be pretty tricky. I haven’t been there before so it’s going to be new for me and it’s a lot of learning there as well.”
Grove has already tasted Surfers Paradise success in its young history, Reynolds having taken pole position and a podium in the Saturday race there last year.
The team will retain the brushed copper liveries it ran at Bathurst for both next week’s Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 and the season-ending VAILO Adelaide 500.
