Brenton Grove was the innocent party in a crash at a safety car restart where Renee Gracie was turned around at the fast Turn 1, leaving the OnlyFans Audi sideways on the racing line before she was collected by Grove.
While the Melbourne Performance Centre crew was able to repair Gracie's Audi, the Grove Racing team elected to retire the Mercedes AMG, with a view to get the car repaired properly for the next round of the championship at Phillip Island in three weeks time.
Grove was not impressed with the restart antics that caused significant damage to his Mercedes.
"I was trying to mind my own business on the restart as we had a PLP to serve that lap," said Grove.
"However, a few cars ahead seemed to forget that we still had a third of the race to go and decided to dive Renee at the first corner.
"We were caught up in an unnecessary incident. I would’ve thought the guys would be smarter with the experience they have, but clearly not.
"The car has too much damage to fix safely for today. So it’s best to take it offline and fix the car properly before Phillip Island."
Yesterday's race was won by the Team BRM-run Audi of Alex Peroni and Mark Rosser. CLICK HERE for the full race report.
Sixteen cars will face the start of the final one-hour race today. The Grove exit joins the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Volante Rosso who retired their car after a crash in qualifying.
Today's race starts at 11:55am AEST.
The next round of Fanatec GT Australia will be held at Phillip Island – the inaugural GT Festival – on August 23-25.