Speaking with Speedcafe at the Sydney 500, Grove said he was still recovering from the injury but planned to be back in a race car in the coming months.
The crash occurred when Kenny Habul in the #75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG sideswiped Grove in another Mercedes-AMG at Brock’s Skyline.
The contact sent the Bathurst 12 Hour veteran nose-first into the inside wall, which launched the #4 into the air.
Grove was heard groaning on the onboard footage and later seen keiled over the concrete barrier and was taken to Orange Hospital for scans.
An initial statement from the team said Grove had suffered “back damage” before a subsequent statement said he had been cleared of any major injuries.
“The back’s quite sore,” said Grove, who suffered a crushed vertebrae.
“It was a big impact. Most of the impact was taken through my back. There’s no long-term issues that I’m going to have. I’ll get a full recovery.
“It’s quite painful to be honest, and it’s a process we need to work through. We’re probably six to eight to 10 weeks out of the car and then we’ll get back in the car and we’ll get going.
“If you race long enough, these things are gonna happen. The last few years haven’t been great at Bathurst, but you know I’ve had a great record up there.
“We’ve had five class wins, so over a period of 14-odd years, you know, we’ve finished a lot of races, done well.
“The last couple of years haven’t been great, but. be assured I’ll go back up there and we’ll keep pushing until we can get a great result.”
Speaking in the immediate aftermath of the crash, Habul said he thought Grove was letting him through.
The pair were racing for position and Habul closed the gap quickly on approach to Brock’s Skyline.
The two-time Bathurst 12 Hour winner said he was ‘completely shocked’ by the accident.
“I saw Kenny and he was obviously fighting with the Ferrari at the time,” said Grove.
“As we came across the top through there, I had a look in the rear vision mirror. He was about five car lengths back.
“I’d been working all weekend — because in a GT car, once you get through McPillamy, you can actually go from the ripple strip back to the inside, or the outside of the track, really quickly to open the corner up.
“We were getting a lot of speed down through the Esses, so I opened the corner up thinking that he wouldn’t be there.
“He braked extremely late. From his perspective, he’s probably thinking that I was moving over to allow him through, but that was where you get a good run down the hill.
“It’s really unfortunate. The hit wasn’t hugely hard, but the outcome was dramatic.
“We hit a concrete wall at over 200 km/h to a dead stop, I mean it’s going to cause a lot of damage and cause a bit of damage to me as well.”
Crikey! Here’s another angle of Stephen Grove’s accident at Skyline, and it isn’t pretty…
📺 https://t.co/yy7aP4kscz
⏱️ https://t.co/TNcx6ZT1RC#IGTC | #B12Hr 🦘 pic.twitter.com/1eBvwP6Yvb— Intercontinental GT Challenge (@IntercontGTC) February 1, 2025
Grove said he hasn’t had much correspondence with Habul since the crash, though his son Brenton has been providing the US-based Australian updates.
Grove said he has plans to race in Europe in another Mercedes-AMG. Those plans are being finalised.
“We have a great relationship with Mercedes. We have a car that we have in Europe that we’ll use,” he said.
“The car here is probably unusable, so we need to work through rebuilding that and getting that back on track so we can test here and do some racing here, but it’s definitely long-distance racing overseas.”
