{"id":502310,"date":"2026-02-25T03:36:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/502310\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T03:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:36:19","slug":"grove-racings-blunt-sydney-500-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/502310\/","title":{"rendered":"Grove Racing\u2019s blunt Sydney 500 assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AS competitive a start to season 2026 as it enjoyed, Grove Racing categorises its Sydney 500 a failure.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.v8sleuth.com.au\/stats-driver-2716-Matt-Payne\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Payne<\/a> is tied on points with championship leader <a href=\"https:\/\/www.v8sleuth.com.au\/stats-driver-1545-Broc-Feeney\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Broc Feeney<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.v8sleuth.com.au\/stats-driver-2726-Kai-Allen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kai Allen<\/a> turned in a starring performance in the Sunday race, but the Groves are setting themselves an ultra-high benchmark.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHonestly, anything but a win is now a failure for us,\u201d said team owner Stephen Grove.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/superstore.v8sleuth.com.au\/products\/1-18-scale-2025-bathurst-1000-winner-100-ford-mustang-payne-tander-model-pre-order?utm_source=SRBuyButton&amp;utm_medium=website\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ACD18F25BWW_PitBoard_1024x1024.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ve got to continue to work hard and tick everything off and continue to grow as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not to say Grove was too downcast.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got two really good young drivers in Matty Payne and Kai Allen, so to finish where we did is a positive outcome considering we didn\u2019t have a great weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/RGP-2026-Dunlop-Sydney-500-_25A1784-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-248852\"  \/>Matt Payne on the Sunday podium. Pic: Ross Gibb<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s satisfying to have Matty equal top in the championship but it\u2019s very early days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow we\u2019re excited to be heading to the Grand Prix as we have fast cars and we\u2019ve done well there in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Round 2 will unfold at Albert Park across March 5-8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AS competitive a start to season 2026 as it enjoyed, Grove Racing categorises its Sydney 500 a failure.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-502310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502310","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=502310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}