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Grove Racing has confirmed it will field an unchanged line-up in this year’s Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour.
Father-son duo Stephen Grove and Brenton Grove will once again be joined by Great Britain’s Ben Barker.
Grove Racing first entered the Bathurst 12 Hour in 2014 and has contested every edition of the endurance race since then.
In that time, the team has taken five class wins, four of which have included Barker.
The Grove/Grove/Barker line-up will once again steer the team’s Porsche 911 GT3 R in what doubles as the Intercontinental GT Challenge Powered by Pirelli season-opener.
“It’ll definitely be Brenton and I and Ben Barker,” Stephen Grove told Speedcafe.com.
“Ben is somebody that I’ve done six or seven now with him.
“There’s a fair bit of loyalty to bring him back, so I really want him to come back and keep racing with us. So that’s what we’ll do.”
This year’s Bathurst 12 Hour will be their best chance to date to win the race outright, with Pro-Am forming the top class.
All-professional driver line-ups have been ditched this year due to a myriad of reasons caused largely by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event had been poised for a February return but was ultimately postponed to May 13-15.
The prospect of an outright win is one that has Grove excited, though he’s conscious of the stiff opposition his team will face.
“We won the Pro-Am the last time it was held, which was 2020,” said Grove.
“To win the Pro-Am now, there’s a lot of high calibre driers and a lot of people. It’s a tough race to win.
“We’ve had a lot of success there, so we’ll be going there to try and see if we can go back-to-back.”
Following the Bathurst 12 Hour, the team will head to Belgium for the TotalEnergies 24 Hours of Spa with a yet-to-be-confirmed driver line-up that could include Matt Payne.
“We’ll do the Bathurst 12 Hour and then we send our car straight after to Belgium, because there’s a two-day test day in June,” said Grove.
“We’ll do that at Spa, the car will stay, and then we’ll do Spa 24 Hour.”
