{"id":601458,"date":"2026-04-12T05:35:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T05:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/601458\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T05:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T05:35:15","slug":"grove-racing-penalised-supercars-teams-championship-points-for-taupo-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/601458\/","title":{"rendered":"Grove Racing penalised Supercars teams’ championship points for Taup\u014d breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

A BREACH committed before the Taup\u014d action had even started has cost Grove Racing second place in the live pitlane order for the Christchurch Super440.<\/p>\n

The Penrite squad will be housed in the third set of garages next weekend at Ruapuna Raceway<\/a>, behind Triple Eight and Walkinshaw TWG Racing.<\/p>\n

The Groves would have been ahead of Walkinshaw TWG had it not been stung a 30-point teams\u2019 championship deduction after an investigation into having too many personnel at the track on Thursday set-up day.<\/p>\n

Three teams were found guilty of exceeding the prescribed eight-person skeleton crew limit for Taup\u014d, in line with industry-wide cost-saving measures.<\/p>\n

The Groves were sanctioned harshest of all, its defence on the basis of occupational health and safety having unravelled due to the fact it conducted pitstop practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have though taken into account that the Pit Stop practice, which was conducted could not, on any view, have been required for safety policy compliance and had the potential to give a sporting advantage to the Team,\u201d read a portion of the stewards\u2019 report.<\/p>\n

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

Both the Groves and the Blanchard Racing Team had argued they\u2019d sought approval from then Supercars CEO James Warburton on safety grounds to bring more than eight crew members to the track.<\/p>\n

That was considered a mitigating factor in the severity of the penalty, seeing both be fined just $750 (although the Groves also attracted the aforementioned points penalty owing to performing pitstop practice).<\/p>\n

Team 18 meanwhile was fined $2000, having brought additional people to the track on Thursday upon seeing others breach the personnel limit directive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the conduct of others is no defence, it does provide some mitigation. In our view Team 18 should not be deducted Team Championship points but the fine should be substantial,\u201d explained the stewards report.<\/p>\n

In other matters, Matt Payne<\/a> was fined $3000 for losing control during a passenger lap on Friday afternoon (he speared off-track at Turn 11), while Matt Stone Racing was fined $500 for failing to submit engine logs by the stated deadline.<\/p>\n

How to Future-Proof Supercars: The Changing of the Guard<\/p>\n

With the changing of the guard in Supercars racing, is there a personality drain at the top end of the sport?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A BREACH committed before the Taup\u014d action had even started has cost Grove Racing second place in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-601458","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\/601458","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=601458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}