New Sandown 500 date forces co-driver changes
By Andrew Clarke
Date posted: 28 March 2024
The change to the date of the Sandown 500 has scuppered Grove Racing’s chances of running Kevin Estre for a second Supercars season without opening up the door significantly to other international drivers, such as Porsche superstar Matt Campbell who will be racing at Fuji.
The Sandown 500 was originally schedule for 22 September, which really only a clash with an IMSA race, but no.
Moving the race by a week has caused the clash, but has also created other issues such as blocking any local drivers from running in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Watkins Glen.
For Stephen Grove, the shift in date has caused a rethink, but he still wants an international driver.
“We don’t know who our new targets are, but we still want an international driver,” he said.
“The change in the date does create issues and we’re still just in the process. We’re not overly stressed at this stage, there’s a lot of good calibre overseas drivers that we have access to.
“We’re just working through the process.
“Our ability to maybe get one of the guys that we traditionally would like to have has changed, and it did catch us by surprise.”
GT gun Estre impressed on debut at Sandown and Bathurst last year, and would have returned sharper, but the World Endurance Championship round at Fuji on the same day as the new date for the Sandown 500 he is unlikely to be available.
“Running Kevin would have been a good thing. That would have given us a second year with him in these cars, that was our desire to start with but we had nothing in place,” Grove said.
“We were working towards it, but my understanding is that there is a date clash now.”
With Estre driving for the Penske Porsche team in the WEC with Matt Campbell, two of his preferred choices have been ruled out.
“Everything is open now, it’s not something that we stress about, or even something that we’re working day and night to get resolved,” he said.
“We’re just working through the process. If you think heading in a direction and that doesn’t work out, then it’s opens a whole lot of other avenues.
“It could be locals, it could be internationals, we really don’t know now. But we do a lot of GT races and we race with a lot of these guys overseas and we see how good they are and I think it just adds something to the event and it helps us learn too.”
Races on September 13-15
- Final round of the IndyCar Championship at Nashville
- NASCAR Xfinity and Cup Series races at Watkins Glen
- World Endurance Championship race at Fuji (including LMGT3)
- Sandown 500
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