{"id":331712,"date":"2025-12-07T00:59:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T00:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/331712\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T00:59:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T00:59:23","slug":"why-riccardo-corte-joined-grove-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/331712\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Riccardo Corte joined Grove Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"

ONE of the many fascinating narratives of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship will be Riccardo Corte\u2019s impact on Grove Racing.<\/p>\n

Corte has joined the Penrite-backed squad from Ferrari\u2019s Formula 1 program, where he earlier this year was performance engineer for Lewis Hamilton (having previously worked directly with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc).<\/p>\n

He will slot in as Kai Allen<\/a>\u2019s race engineer next season, as incumbent Alistair McVean is promoted to head of performance.<\/p>\n

It begs the question: why would a motorsport-loving Italian trade Ferrari F1 for a category he only discovered a matter of months ago?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a dream that I achieved to work in Ferrari. I was looking for a different life adventure and I wanted to live in a bigger city as well,\u201d Corte, 33, explained to V8 Sleuth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I was speaking with an Australian friend working in the former company, he told me about Supercars. I looked at some video and some races and it looked pretty cool.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI always had a lot of fun with Australian people I met around the world and a lot of respect for their culture, so it looked quite interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I got this contact with Brenton (Grove) and they were super friendly\u2026 Melbourne looked like a good place to be, so I came here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grove previously revealed to V8 Sleuth that long-time friend Johannes Hatz, who is Charles Leclerc\u2019s performance engineer, had been pivotal in connecting the two parties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Corte arrived in Australia just in time for the Adelaide Grand Final, where Allen contended for the championship and teammate Matt Payne<\/a> won the last race of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very interesting, it looks like a lot of fun,\u201d Corte said of his first impression of Supercars.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a mini-F1, everything is similar but made simpler, which simple sometimes is also more enjoyable it looks like.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is relaxed, the people is super, the team spirit is really great. I think it can be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso the competition is very tight, it is all based on car set-up, there is no car development. Maybe from the factory side it is less challenging but on the track it makes it more exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The #26 Penrite Mustang of Kai Allen. Pic: Supplied\/Mark Horsburgh<\/p>\n

The Groves are already stacked with accomplished engineers from McVean to Grant McPherson and young gun Jack Bell, but Corte hopes to bring an injection of fresh ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that maybe Formula 1 expertise will bring a bit more expertise on data acquisition on the car, which might translate to being useful for some set-up choices,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo let\u2019s see; there will be work to do over the summer to learn and to try to see which of these fresh ideas can be useful for the series.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for teaming up with 20-year-old Allen?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was impressed how keen he is, how focused he is, and how good he was delivering,\u201d said Corte.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be as a rookie in the finals and fighting with the big names, I\u2019m excited to be working with him and to see what we can achieve together for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ONE of the many fascinating narratives of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship will be Riccardo Corte\u2019s impact on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-331712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}