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Groves confident of extracting more from Porsche GT3-R 911-II
Brenton Grove says that his team is working hard to find even more pace from its awesome Porsche GT3-R 911-II that his family team races in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS.
Grove, a long time sports car driver and now part owner of the Kelly Grove Racing Supercars team, brought in the brand-new GT3-R 911-II into Australia last year, with all eyes on fighting for the inaugural GT World Challenge Australia crown.
Brenton and his father Stephen currently sit fifth in the Pro Am driver’s title and are doing all in their powers to chase down the leading combinations of Yasser Shahin/Garth Tander (Audi), Jefri Ibrahim (Mercedes) and Tony Bates (Audi).
The Grove Porsche has claimed podium results, and led races this year, but Brenton says that there is still some way to go to catch the leaders, and his team is pulling out all stops to address the deficit.
“Each race event, we’re learning more about the car, and each track brings different challenges and requires different things from the car,” said Grove.
“We’re limited on the camber we can run on our car with this generation of the Pirelli tyre, so we have to compromise on set-up and our tyre life is not as consistent.
“We’ve been speaking to Porsche Motorsport in Germany about how to address that issue and get on top of it as quickly as we can.
“We have an extremely strong, long-time relationship with Porsche. Our own in-house capability is great, but it’s always handy to have Porsche ready and able to help with certain questions we might have.”
Grove says that he feels Porsches’ expertise will be able to assist with the tyre camber query as the specification of the Pirelli tyre used in GT World Challenge Australia is one generation behind what European competition is currently racing on, meaning that they have plenty of data with that compound.
“They have different ways or tricks to get around the compromises we’ve had to make,” he said.
“So they can help with the set-up and geometry that can cut our learning time very quickly. That’s one of the advantages of being with Porsche. We’ve found this problem, but now we’ll get them to point us in the right direction.”
The fourth and final round of the GT World Challenge ‘sprint’ championship will be held at Sandown in September, followed by two ‘endurance’ rounds at The Bend (October) and Bathurst (November).
Grove feels that compared to the previous three circuits raced on this year, Sandown offers his entry the best chance at a top result.
“I think Sandown is the best shot out of any of the tracks left on the calendar this year,” he said.
“It’s a track we know really well, and it brings everyone closer. I also think that we are pretty close in terms of set-up. The car isn’t bad. If we put Earl (Bamber) or someone like that in the car, they’d be right up there front.
“There’s probably a little bit of driver in it too. Catching and racing with guys like Garth Tander and Chaz Mostert is no easy feat.”
The Sandown Raceway event will be held as part of the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships on September 17-19.