The Grove team failed to capitalise on its strong start to the season in Perth with a lack of proper front-running speed at any point across the weekend.

An eighth place for Matt Payne on Saturday was the highlight, while a fuel pump issue led to Richie Stanaway being punted into the wall early in that first race of the weekend.

On Sunday the pair finished ninth (Payne) and 12th (Stanaway), decent recoveries from 16th and 17th on the grid respectively.

While those Sunday results were far from disastrous, they were noteworthy given the team’s recent form.

Speaking to Speedcafe, team principal David Cauchi conceded that the slip back towards the midfield was “unacceptable” given the ambitions of the team.

“Yeah, without question it’s an unacceptable weekend for us,” he said.

“The expectation from myself and [owners] Brenton [Grove] and Steve [Grove] and the entire team, there’s a desire to win. Inside the entire team, every boy and girl wants to win.

“So a weekend like that is not acceptable from any one of us.

“It’s happened now so we’ll have to go and dig deep, lift our heads up, and we’ll do exactly that.”

Cauchi, who has title-winning experience from his time at Triple Eight, added that it is important to learn from the weekend as the Grove outfit looks to become a genuine title contender.

“There’s definitely things we’ve learned throughout the weekend, so the engineers will be able to go and do a deep dive into the data and work through all of that to get some answers.

“It’s just one of those things that we have to work through. And yeah, occasionally, you get some weekends like this… but you have to do everything you can to avoid them

“If you want to win a championship, you’ve got to turn up to every weekend with the ability to win. It’s as simple as that.

“And you can’t afford to have weekends where you qualify 18th, because most likely you will not win the championship.

“It doesn’t get any more brutal or blunt than that.”

Grove Racing will head to Darwin sitting fourth in the teams’ standings while Payne and Stanaway are fifth and ninth ninth drivers’ standings.