Grove: Strong results 'earlier than anticipated'

Grove Racing’s strong results of late have come "earlier than anticipated”, says team co-owner Brenton Grove.

Penrite Racing Mustangs have scored six podium results in the last six races.

David Reynolds backed up a Tasmania podium with a pole and three podiums in Melbourne.

Lee Holdsworth, who joined the team in 2022, joined Reynolds on the Race 7 podium at Albert Park.

It marked the first time since 2018 that the Braeside team had two cars on the podium.

It comes after the team, then under its Kelly Grove Racing guise, scored just two podium finishes in 2021.

“We were surprised that it happened at that track,” Grove told Supercars.com of the team’s Albert Park pace.

“We didn’t expect to have such good car speed at the Grand Prix.

“We haven’t done anything revolutionary; yes there have been upgrades, but we’re building on a philosophy.

“We knew we’d have performance, but we didn’t know when it would come.

“It’s earlier than anticipated, but it’s not a shock to us that results are starting to come.”

Reynolds recently told Supercars.com that little has changed on the driving front; rather, a sharpened focus on car set-up has helped push the team forward.

That has been aided by the team’s engineering expansion. The team had three engineers in 2021; it now has seven.

A key coup was acquiring David Cauchi from Triple Eight, with Cauchi the squad’s team principal.

The team also picked up former Formula E engineer Will Davidson alongside Holdsworth.

On top of that, Grove explained that an off-season of soul-searching fast-tracked the team’s bid to unlock performance.

Grove paid particular tribute to Reynolds’ race engineer Alistair McVean, who he labelled as one of the "smartest engineers in pit lane”.

“We spent a lot of time over the summer identifying our weaknesses,” Grove told Supercars.com.

“At the time last year, we probably didn’t have the resource in our team to execute that.

“Cauchi’s leading the team and he’s a large part of it, but there are a lot of people in the team that have had the opportunity to shine.

“There’s nothing spectacular about what we’ve done, we just sat down collectively and have chipped away.

“We didn’t just throw a heap of money at it and find a silver bullet; we looked inwards, improved and got good results."

Grove is now confident the team’s tyre life strengths will carry over to Perth, which will host three races this weekend.

Critically, the team was able to engineer the cars into a competitive position at Albert Park.

Should the team do the same in Perth, Grove expects Penrite Fords to be fighting at the front.

“We’re hopeful that we roll out with a strong package,” Grove said.

“We’re starting to understand the tools better if we don’t.

“We’re not worried about starting a weekend bad and finishing bad.

“We agreed after practice at the Grand Prix that the car was horrible, and then we improved and got pole.

“Engineers and drivers made the right calls. We can do that and be competitive this weekend.

“Where we were in Tasmania and Grand Prix is where our expectation is. We need to continue a performance trend."

Supercars action in Perth will commence at Wanneroo Raceway on Saturday.