Crash brings Stanaway’s Grove debut to early end

Richie Stanaway did not get a single racing lap in his first drive for Grove Racing which came to an early end after a scary crash at the Gulf 12 Hours race at Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi.

Stanaway was driving alongside team owners Brenton and Stephen Grove in the Intercontinental GT Challenge finale on Sunday night.

The trio started 16th with a best time of 1:53.187 in their Porsche 911 GT3 R run alongside Earl Bamber Motorsport.

Brenton started in the car before handing over to father Stephen and the squad were in a great position after the opening hour and a half.

They were sitting third on the road and first in Pro-Am until disaster struck.

The crashed Stephen Grove Porsche spinning through the turn 1 run off. Image: Twitter

Approaching the braking area of turn 1, the Porsche on cold tyres suddenly shot across the track and speared straight into the inside barrier before coming to rest at the end of the run off area in front of the circuit’s tower.

Stephen Grove was unharmed from the crash but the 911 was not, with the entire front end bodywork torn off on impact.

Up front the fight for victory proved to be an arm wrestle between Mercedes and BMW.

The Valentino Rossi lead Team WRT #46 M4 GT3 ultimately fell 12.8s short of victory as Luca Stolz, Michael Grenier and Maro Engel prevailed in the Team GruppeM Racing Mercedes AMG GT3.

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