
Photo: 2 Seas Motorsport
Grove Racing is set to return to the Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour after a one-year absence with a single Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.
Stephen Grove, who contested last weekend’s Lenovo Gulf 12 Hours with son Brenton and Mercedes-AMG driver Jules Gounon, told Sportscar365 that the team will be back at Mount Panorama for the long-running Australian enduro.
Last year, the team had missed the event due to its close proximity to the Michelin 24H Dubai, which earlier this year marked the first race the team contested since its switch to Mercedes-AMG machinery.
The Gulf 12H, meanwhile, marked the first time that Grove paired up with U.K.-based, Bahraini-flagged 2 Seas Motorsport, with Grove revealing that that race was part of a new partnership that will see the Groves part ways with Earl Bamber Motorsport.
EBM, founded by Cadillac factory driver Earl Bamber, had provided the Groves with operational support for the last number of years, but Grove cited a desire to work with a team with more decidated brand expertise as a reason for the switch.
“One of the things that we found is it’s like any manufacturer or any brand of car: you’ve got to go to the people that do it all the time,” Grove told Sportscar365,
“EBM are so good with the Porsches and that’s where they come from and that’s their expertise so we just decided to run with 2 Seas who are really experts in Mercs.”
Grove further outlined that the team now has a pair of Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos at its disposal, with 2 Seas set to take care of the chassis that contested the Gulf 12H for a yet-to-be-decided European program.
“So one car will stay with them in England, and we’ve got one car in Australia,” Grove said.
“The one in Australia, we’ve brought in-house now, we do [that with] our Supercars team. So we’ll use that one through the infrastructure we’ve got there.
“So the next race for us is Bathurst 12 Hour and we’ll be using the Australian Merc and our Supercars team will run that weekend. The European one will go back to England.”
Grove indicated that it has not yet been decided what races the team will contest beyond Bathurst, but the Australian expressed a willingness to contest September’s Suzuka 1000km, which also forms part of the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
