Grove Racing headed to Portugal to contest the 24 Hours of Portimao bringing a superb driver line-up to drive the squad’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 against large competition.
Following on from a quick, but shortened event at the opening round of Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS, but Brenton and Stephen Grove will take in multiple international race es just like previous seasons, with Portimao the second.
Joined by Grove Racing Supercars driver Matt Payne and endurance pilot Garth Tander ensuring a competitive quartet, while it also being one of the latter’s few overseas events in his illustrious career.
The Grove Racing Mercedes-AMG started third and was an early frontrunner, but was forced into retirement following fuel pressure problems and a suspected fluid leak led to a small fire.
Despite two difficult international campaigns in Dubai and Portugal, the team will have further events to the calendar in addition to locally in Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS.
Also overseas, Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS featured some regular competitors including Triple Eight Race Engineering and Jaxon Evans, who returned to his Porsche roots.
A title contender last season, Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim raced at his home circuit, Chang International Circuit alongside factory ace Luca Stolz to finish eighth and 22nd in the two races.
Evans re-joined the Phantom Global Racing squad he scored fourth outright at the Repco Bathurst 12 Hour together with to partner Sun JingZu, but a slow pit stop in the second event dropped the team outside the top 10 leaving Chang with a pair of 16th place finishes.
The next round of Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS is at The Bend Motorsport Park on May 31-June 2 as part of the Shannons SpeedSeries to be broadcast on 7mate and 7plus.