The 2023 Bathurst 1000-winning co-driver is in fact the leading Grove Racing steerer so far as championship standings are concerned, sitting sixth at one position and 19 points up on Matt Payne after two events.
It was Payne, though, who might have come away with two race wins – rather than none at all – last time out at Albert Park if not for incidents triggered by rival drivers.
Stanaway has looked less like producing a spectacular result than his younger team-mate, and put the #26 Mustang in the wall in Friday practice at Mount Panorama, but has finished in the top half of the field in all six races so far in 2024, including a fourth in Race 1.
“Richie is probably similar to Matt in that he’s got a long way to go in executing on what he can do,” said Brenton Grove, the team’s CEO.
“But that’s a really cool thing; that he went to Bathurst and was faster than Matt and came out of the championship ahead of Matt.
“So, Richie is rusty, it’s as simple as that. He hasn’t driven full-time for a long time.
“He knows the things that he needs to work on, we know the things we need to do to support him through that, but he’s going to be a very exciting talent come midway through the year, I’d say.
“It’ll take him a couple more rounds to get used to the tyre warming process and the tyre conservation process and qualifying and all the different things that are unique to Supercars.
“But, we’re super-proud and happy with how he’s going, he’s got a great benchmark in Matt, so let’s see where he ends up.
“But, certainly there’s a lot of potential there.”
In the very short-term, though, there is something of a reprieve for Stanaway, given the venue for this weekend’s ITM Taupo Super400 is brand-new to the Supercars calendar.
“For me, it’s very exciting to be racing in New Zealand,” said the Kiwi.
“No one’s raced at Taupo before, so I’m looking forward to not being a year behind everyone else, obviously coming back full-time for the first year.
“So, I’m looking forward to that clean slate for everyone.”
Stanaway already has two ‘full-time’ Repco Supercars Championship campaigns under his belt, in 2018 and 2019 (missing seven races of the latter due to injury), then retired himself from motorsport and eventually returned at the 2022 Bathurst 1000.
Payne, despite being more experienced with Gen3 machinery, has only just embarked on his second full season in the competition.
“Matt’s learning still,” said Grove.
“It’s easy to forget that he’s so young and he’s only 14 or 15 rounds into his Supercars career.
“We know as a team that Matt is a progression and there’s a long way to go with Matt too, which makes us really excited with what he’s doing now, so we couldn’t be happier with Matt.
“He analysed the [Albert Park] weekend alongside us and what we could have done better as a team and maybe where we could have done things differently in the races.
“But, he’s got a long way to go and that’s really cool because he’s so determined, he’s working so hard, he’s driving a lot in our GT programme as well, he’s doing everything he can to better himself, and he’s so much more comfortable in the team environment now.
“He’s working really well with the engineers, he’s developing the car, and he’s enjoying all the elements of it, so who knows where he can go?
“We’d like to get some more race wins than what we’ve had but I think, this weekend, he’ll hopefully be standing tall.”
The weekend’s sole, 90-minute Practice session starts tomorrow at 12:55 local time/10:55 AEST.
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